Comments on: the eleventy billionth time email has screwed up my communication

By: Book Review: Escape from Cubicle Nation, by Pam Slim | Pace and Kyeli

Book Review: Escape from Cubicle Nation, by Pam Slim | Pace and Kyeli — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 13:01:46 +0000

[...] not via phone or email [...]

By: 2008 | Pace and Kyeli

2008 | Pace and Kyeli — Sat, 01 Nov 2008 04:07:41 +0000

[...] We made our first podcast and (unrelatedly) made it into the top million websites! We thought about buying a duplex with Kyeli’s mom and brother to convince them to move to Aust… Pace learned the difference between being 99% honest and being 100% honest. A former world champion [...]

By: Overwhelmed by the stress of a full email inbox and the obligation to reply? | Pace and Kyeli

Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:46:57 +0000

[...] from sending it. Also think about whether email is the best medium to convey what you want to say. Touchy subjects are best handled in person, and phone is often better than [...]

By: Mantic-Angel

Mantic-Angel — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 18:31:20 +0000

@Pace: I’ve actually found that there are a number of equivalent channels in text. On the phone, I read a lot in to tone of voice and speaking pace. In person, body language and posture are big factors. Online, response times, word choice, and emotives become important. While I can read certain people better in certain mediums, there’s definitely people that are MORE expressive to me online, and others that I just can’t read at all off of their emails :)

It really seems like they’re each separate social skills, and most people only ever learn one or two. Having had to deliberately learn a fair amount of the face-to-face, I’d even say they’re learnable skills, but I don’t see many people really making an effort to learn how to communicate WELL in new mediums.

By: Pace

Pace — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 16:27:04 +0000

@Oliver: Exactly. With text, there’s less information being conveyed, and so there are lots more things for the recipient to fill in with assumptions.

@Mantic-Angel: That makes a lot of sense, as long as you’re communicating with people who don’t perceive tone, body language, and all the other things that come along with face-to-face communication. If you’re communicating with aspies or (certain sorts of) geeks, then face-to-face doesn’t add anything to your bandwidth, merely to your ping time. (: But when communicating with non-geeks and non-aspies, there are a lot of subtle things that are completely lost if the message is stripped down to just the text.

By: Mantic-Angel

Mantic-Angel — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 02:10:02 +0000

Hmmm, interesting to think about. Such miscommunications happen to me plenty face-to-face, but they’re much easier to sort out, because there’s not the response-delay that email introduces. It makes sense that a miscommunication can be a lot more time sensitive than the original issue, and thus email is probably a really bad choice for untangling it if time is important to you.

I’ve actually found email a nice medium, as long as I take in to account the delay; the delay means I don’t use it often, though. I’d much rather instant message or call someone on the phone, since then I can TALK to them instead of just leaving them a message. Interactive, two-way communication rocks :)

By: Oliver Danni

Oliver Danni — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 02:55:06 +0000

I have found that the internet is the prime breeding ground for the Usual Error for this very reason. Since everyone’s text looks the same on the internet, people assume that when someone says something on the internet, they mean it the same way as the reader would if it were the reader saying it. When I write an email, I’m not necessarily thinking about how the reader is going to read it…I’m thinking about how the email sounds to ME in MY head, and my decisions about what words, grammatical conventions, etc. to use are based on how I would react to those choices if I read them…but actually have nothing to do with how the recipient of my email will react, because I’m not in their head reading so I don’t know what goes on in their head while they read!

By: Pam

Pam — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:52:27 +0000

Oh, that’s such awesome news! Yay!

By: How to get organized, part one: coffee table + post-it notes = business plan! | Pace and Kyeli

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 23:12:11 +0000

[...] the eleventy billionth time email has screwed up my communication [...]