After being the recipient of tweets, email, comments under blog posts, and other online communications that miss-the-mark, I’m constantly struck by how often I take things the wrong way and end up calling someone to ensure I didn’t misconstrue what they were intending to say and to gain a better understanding of the point they were trying to get across.
This sort of miscommunication is becoming more problematic…not less…especially as real-time communications occur with services like Twitter. Add to that a limit in the number of characters these services allow us to use and you can see how challenging it is to convey any kind of deep meaning using real-time communications.
My son had an assignment for English class that had the following thought provoking table showing how easy it is to make a statement and have it come across COMPLETELY WRONG depending upon the emphasis of one specific word within that statement. You’ve probably seen this sort of stuff before, but it never hurts to be reminded how ONE WORD can completely change the context of your communication.
Think about this the next time you’re ready to click “send” on that tweet.
| WHAT I SAID | WHAT I MEANT |
| I didn’t say she stole my money | Someone else said it |
| I didn’t say she stole my money | I didn’t say it |
| I didn’t say she stole my money | I only implied it |
| I didn’t say she stole my money | I said someone did, not necessarily her |
| I didn’t say she stole my money |
I considered it borrowed, even though she didn’t ask
|
| I didn’t say she stole my money | Only that she stole money |
| I didn’t say she stole my money | She stole stuff which cost me money to replace |
About Steve Borsch
Thanks Steve
It’s useful to be reminded of how the quick, informal (i.e. in some respects speech-like) text communication of the internet differs from speech: you cannot finesse meaning with intonation, stress, facial expression, gestures or other contextual cues. Your recipient may read your words long after the spontaneity of your post has faded. it can be viewed and reviewed time and again – and by the whole interweb. :-O
I think this matters greatly, particularly in communication for business and education and with people we don’t know well and/or whose first language isn’t English.
For the record, this is known as contrastive stress and is definitely best avoided in written text, or at least used with caution. The use of italics/ the em tag to indicate contrastive stress can be at best ambigous
When I was an executive at a software company, several other execs would hold me up for collegial ridicule for my “Ted Kaczynski manifesto” emails. Usually long, quite detailed, and admittedly challenging to carve out the time to read, my boss finally came to my defense in a meeting by saying:
“Yes they’re long but he can talk to all of us at once and when you’re done reading it, you *clearly* understand his arguments, right?” Everyone agreed.
The challenge is balancing clear messages with a clarity of intent in a day when few of us can ask our readers, audience, or “followers” to invest the time to get a holistic view of what one is trying to communicate.
Thanks for the very thoughtful comment Paul.