Tone and context

Emails do not have a tone….

Well not without context.  I am always fascinated how people can say the tone of the email. I am sure the person writing the mail had a tone, but its not possible for the reader to read the tone as intended without adding their own tone to it…

And here we enter a mine field, because I have checked myself, sometimes I have to reread something a few times, because we see what we want to see most of the time. It’s easy to jump on the horse wagon and go off about something, but do we ever stop to realise, the tone that we apply, may not be what is really meant.

Politicians exploit this, because they “never say” or “never meant it that way”. But the plain old truth about the matter that unless you understand context (and few do) we simply have to read words for what they are. Books are a better medium to get a point across, because they can create context, but emails are too short for that. I am also sure you would not want essays arriving in your mail box.

Tone and context are needed for effective delivery of your intended message, yet few people ever give both.  It’s the reason I write with brackets and supposed expressions.

What’s worse is that even in speaking to people, they really only hear what they want to hear or simply skim what is being said……

I sometimes wish we could simply download what we are trying to say, but hey I guess there is a reason that we are forced to use words.  And we are subjected to the reasoning of others….