Just as men and women differ in the way that they communicate face to face, they also communicate differently on the Internet, researchers in New Zealand say.

E-mails from women workers are more likely to contain questions and apologies than those written by men, the researchers say. Women tend to be complimentary to colleagues in their e-mails and modest about their own abilities. Men are much more assertive. They tend to convey opinions rather than to seek them and to insult people in a way that they might not dare if face to face.

The study is supported by previous research on how men and women take part in chatrooms — online discussions — on the Internet. They found that the style of writing and the things they talked about were different.

Men are more likely to swap harsh personal insults on the Net, a practice known as flaming.

Tamar Murachver, co-author of the study, said that although e-mails are written, they are sent and received so quickly that they mirror the interactivity of conversation.

The researchers, from the University of Otago, conducted experiments in which male and female undergraduates were asked to send e-mails to each other in which they did not disclose their gender.

The researchers found they could distinguish the e-mails of the men and women simply by the features that they used. Women used phrases such as “your poem was good” and “sorry I haven’t written”. The men conveyed opinions and tended to write much more than the women.