Improving Communication Via Email and Text
March 10th, 2008 by Katrina GallagherChristine wrote an article about Communication Skills for Business Zone.
Here are the notes:
Email and text messages
Email and text messages have taken communication into a whole new dimension. They are fast, economical and in some instances enable friends to keep in touch far more frequently than the ‘pen pal process’ ever did. Could such marvellous inventions possibly have any downsides? Well, yes they do.
Punctuation
Punctuation was invented so the sender could visually demonstrate emphasis, tone, inflection etc, in the written word. Commas, exclamation marks, brackets, full stops and all those other small but highly effective symbols help us to fill in the blanks left when we are trying to interpret a written message and body language and verbal emotions are not available to assist us.
Thank goodness for punctuation! Great! Except that when people text or email, grammar and punctuation seem to have gone out of the window which totally changes the meaning of a message.
Examples Of Ambiguous Messages Without Punctuation
Here is a well known example of how that can happen. An English professor wrote these words on the chalkboard:
A woman without her man is nothing
and asked his students to punctuate it correctly.
All of the males in the class wrote: A woman, without her man, is nothing.
All the females in the class wrote: A woman: without her, man is nothing.
Punctuation is everything.
Business Implications
How many quickly and carelessly sent texts or emails have left the reader scratching their head in a ball of frustration as they try to second guess what the sender was trying to say?
No wonder that ‘poor communication’ continues to be blamed in the workplace for reducing the standard customer service, low morale, misunderstandings and mistakes some of which are very expensive.
One cannot dismiss the benefits email and text messages have brought to communication, but equally they have brought confusion, frustration and costly mistakes which could drastically be improved by taking time to compose the message carefully, and with thought.
Misinterpretation
When writing a business letter most people will take time with punctuation, spelling mistakes and its composition. Despite all of this it can still be misinterpreted. It seems though that when we write a text or email we consider it acceptable to forget all the attributes that help make the written word easily understood. We seem to have accepted that fast methods of communication can be discharged with fast input and limited attention to simple tools that would make the content sensible and legible.
It is the sender’s responsibility to ensure that the content of their message has been fully understood. Sadly, many of us seem to think that with the simple press of a button the responsibility of understanding the message now falls solely upon the recipient.
For years we have poured scorn on legal documents because they are written in ways we don’t understand and now we have invented our own version. It just doesn’t take as long to compose!
Resources
To help improve your written communication skills, you could take a communication skills course or swat up using some of the resources we’ve found on the Internet and in libraries.
