This topic has been knocking around in my head for a while now, so it’s about time to post about it.

One of the limitations of the written word is that we lose meaning as compared to in-person interaction. According to one of my college textbooks, Looking Out / Looking In by Adler and Towne, social scientists peg the amount of meaning we derive from body language at 65%. We also take a lot of meaning from vocal tone. We leave about 9% for the words themselves.

Writing does have voice and tone, but they’re not the same as in speech. Still, writing can carry emotion to the point that you can tell the writer’s mood. Writers have to be careful.

One day in college, I read a letter to the editor that was more of a guest column. I let it upset me, and I wrote a reply that was in the next edition two days later. While I was at work, a fellow writing tutor was reading the paper during some down time. She happened to be reading my response when I entered the room to chat. She said, “Whoa, this guy’s really upset.” Then she noticed who had written it, and she was pretty surprised.

Have you ever sent an instant message or fired off an email, then reread what you sent and realized that your words could be easily misconstrued? That’s one of the reasons it’s important to let emotional emails wait for a time so you can cool off and tone it down.

Think of how many ways the following phrase, if issued over instant messenger, could be taken:

“What are you doing?”

Just think of how many ways you’ve heard that question asked verbally, and all the reader has to do is pick one in order to interpret the words.

I have stopped time after time to rephrase something that I was about to type because the original phrasing could have easily been misinterpreted.

So much communication takes place these days without face-to-face or even voice-to-voice interaction. The lack of body language and verbal tones makes effective writing a challenge. It’s one of the reasons that writing is a craft; we have to carefully assemble words and sentences to create meaning. And it means that we have to make the words count.