What you meant is clear to you. It's not clear to other people. You can chose to ignore them - maybe the people who misread the tweet are a small minority. Or you can chose to think about communication style and whether more people had the same "uncharitable" interpretation.

For what it's worth I lean more to the uncharitable reading of the tweet, although I'm not as firm about that reading as others appear to be.

Tweets for communication are hard so it's not particularly suprising when what you say and what you think you say doesn't match what other people think you said.

I don't; if anything, I personally find them too charitable and reasonable.

Just admit that you (if you're the one who wrote that response; it's not exactly clear who's who in this discussion...) were being a bit of a twit and move on. We all do it; I do it, the girl next door does it, my grandma even does it and she's the nicest person I know. There's no shame in being honest about it.

No, for example it is 100% uncharitable and unreasonble to assert that "please" is sarcastic. The truth is quite the opposite.

I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that one, then, though thanks for the clarification nonetheless.

Typically (at least in American English vernacular), "please" is very frequently used in a sarcastic manner (e.g. "You think you can jump from the top of that building and not get hurt? Bitch, please." or "Oh please, like you know the difference between a grape and a grapefruit."). While this sarcastic usage is usually accompanied by some other word prefixing it ("Oh please" or "Bitch please" or "Nigga please" or somesuch), it's not uncommon to see a lone "please" used in this sense as well, and the tweet in question very closely resembled that usage.

I'll have to stop saying please when in the US then ;-) But seriously, thanks for taking the time to explain your point of view. alexis.