From a netfriend:

In this email world, many of the softeners of our language are unavailable – tone of voice, facial expression, and body language are all out – so that leaves us to try to communicate using only is it 15% or 20% of what we’d have face to face? Verbal softeners such as “may” “could” “perhaps” “I think” “from my perspective..” etc can sometimes help us focus more on the issues and less on feeling personally attacked. Also questions can be helpful, don’t you think? 🙂