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Comment by tjmaxal | Hacker News Reader

I remember in high school I had a teacher who taught us the hierarchy of communication. In person is first, by phone is second and written is third. This is because more of the message is transmitted in person ie you get words,voice and body language, with the phone you only get words and voice and with the written word you only get the words themselves. To this day if I have something important to say I do my best to say it in person or on the phone. Too often in a world of e-mail, texting, and twitter we assume we are being heard clearly through words alone, but for the really important stuff nothing beats face to face communication.

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I think writing provides the most control over your message. With the right construction, you can convey arbitrary emotions with any medium -- but with writing, you can try a few versions and pick the best. You can "un-say" things, and you can revise until your message makes sense.

I think the reason why people think written communication is ineffective, is because most people just can't write.

Personally, I think I talk like I write, which makes my oral communication less effective. As I'm talking, if I think of something else to say, I have to revise my previous statements so that the listener ends up with the same mental picture as me. This takes time and words. When writing, though, I can just delete the thing that I didn't really want to say, and replace it with the better version. This saves the reader time and makes me look better. I think.

(Maybe this also makes me odd, but I feel the "good feeling of social interaction" both after speaking with someone in person or after communicating with them via writing. Writing emails to my favorite girl du jour makes me as nervous as meeting her in real life.)

I mistyped a single letter in an email and offended a coworker for life. He was on the road; I was in the office. I argued persuasively about a difference in design, ending with "When you get it, we can talk some more". I had intended to say "When you get in, we can talk some more".

I had to read that sentence twice to find out the mistyped single letter but oh boy, that single letter changed the tone in its entirely.

Can't you just tell him that it was a typo?

Found out far too late. By that time it would seem like a lame excuse. Live and learn.

Sounds like it was your coworker's communication skills that were lacking, not yours.

I don't know what point you're trying to make, and I don't have a snappy anecdote to back it up. But I know I've observed similar (and similarly unnoticed) slips of pronunciation. It's not like the spoken word is infallible.

I was working a development job, but once a week we all had to do a day of support work. We all hated, we were supporting very non-technical staff, and there tickets were often so much nonsensical jibberish, that it made it very difficult. Often it took a few emails back and forth to find out exactly what the problem was. Eventually I figured out how to use the telephone, and often a 2 minute call would sort out there problems, without any work to be done on the system. It was great to talk to these people, realise that they weren't just problems in the ticketing system, but people trying to get work done. It proved to be a lot less frustrating experience once I figured that out. My colleagues, however, never learnt this trick, despite my assurances that they should just give them a quick call.

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