The fine art of communication—the written kind.
Don’t you just love it when you’re conversing with someone via written form and your intended meaning gets all jumbled up? For example, when individuals are flinging jokes or sarcasm back and forth, and instead of all parties laughing, one or more take the meaning literally, getting upset in the process.
In today’s modern world of text messages, IMing, emails, etc. we run the risk of having what we intended interpreted as something completely different. Not that this isn’t a problem when we verbalize our thoughts face-to-face. But it seems miscommunication is more prevalent in written form, especially with how folks jot quick messages to one another.
So, how do we avoid such misunderstandings? One way is to add little comments such as LOL, just kidding, laughing, etc in parenthesis if what we’ve written was meant to be a joke or sarcastic. But there are times when this is taken to be even more sarcastic—a further slam to the recipients of our writing.
And what if the one who has misinterpreted our written message doesn’t say anything, instead opting to fume in silence? If we’re not informed that we’ve offended another, can we be held responsible? Or is it up to the one with hurt feelings to let us know so we can attempt to clarify to make amends?
Communication has always been a tricky beast, capable of having one or all involved misconstrue what was intended. So does this mean we give up trying to infuse our writing with jokes or lighten it up through sarcasm? In my opinion, no. It means that we have to be extra mindful of how others are affected by what we’ve written.
Words are powerful, capable of evoking a smorgasbord of reactions, many of which are emotional based. When those words are written, leaving behind a permanent imprint that can be digested over and over again by the recipient to the point that they no longer hold the meaning as when they were written, feelings can get hurt. But if, as the writer, we are in tuned to the reactions caused by our words, then we stand a better chance of diffusing misunderstandings before they blossom into atomic mushroom clouds. Likewise, if we are the hurt recipients, then I believe we have the responsibility to speak up to give the other person a chance to clarify.
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