Avoid being short and improve your ability to communicate (Everyone else will thank you) of course I’m not talking about your height! I’m instead talking about the length of your messages.
In today’s digital age, textual chats have become an integral part of communication, whether it’s in the workplace or in our personal lives. However, using these platforms effectively requires more than just typing out messages and hitting send. To ensure clear and efficient communication, I’m sure we’ve all had the situation where the tone has been lost in translation (text-lation?) but there are other things to be aware of when text messaging with others.
We’re no longer in the ages of texting on a Nokia 3310 where every character is multiple key presses away and we’re limited to just 160 characters for each message that costs a small fortune to send (am I showing my age?), we now have full qwerty keyboards even on our phones and text limits are (almost) a thing of the past; consider the following best practices for writing messages in the future:
Acronyms and Abbreviations
Avoid using acronyms especially context aware ones, as they impose extra cognitive load on the recipient(s) as they need to decode the meaning before it means anything, sometimes your brain does this so quickly you don’t notice, other times it takes a while, and the issue is made worse when it’s ambiguous; for example I don’t think you’d want to mix up the National Basketball Association with the National Beekeepers Association (NBA) or to send LOL to someone who’s upset intending to mean ‘Lots of love’ and for them to read ‘laugh out loud’.
If you are going to use an acronym or abbreviation try and include the full length and abbreviation at the same time at the start of the conversation, for example
“Air traffic control (ATC) provide instructions and information to pilots… to be able to work in ATC you must… “.
Doing this means that everyone is on the same page as you have now hinted the meaning of the acronym and that should now hopefully be easily recalled by anyone reading the message.
No Hello
This one might be a pet peeve of mine but please avoid just saying ‘hi’ or some other greeting when sending a message.
Unlike a phone call or a face to face chat, textual chats are asynchronous; someone might see your text 2 seconds after you have sent it, or they might not see it for a few hours, and so requiring the person receiving the message to acknowledge and respond will then usually result in them having to wait for another response to know what the chat is about as you have gone about the rest of your day waiting for them to respond.
It might be that you’re just asking how they are or it could be that you need to know which wire to cut (too much?) in either case make sure to follow up your greeting with what it is you want to ask or convey.
I know I’m not alone on this one either as there’s websites out there which convey this message better than I can.
So again, please just ask me what you want to ask, I won’t be offended and neither will anyone else.
Be transparent
This tip is in a way an extension of previous one, avoid being vague, for example; sending messages like ‘can we talk?’ or ‘Are you able to join this call?‘.
Always try to send enough information so that the other person isn’t left guessing what you want to talk about.
Being vague leads to worry (worry leads to hate and hate leads to the dark side) instead at least include a thread to go off, for example; ‘can we talk about this document?’, ‘Are you able to join a call about this bug?’ etc…
On the other side, being transparent and clear from the get go will likely result in quicker responses and an overall smoother experience for you and anyone you message which can only be a good thing!
Conclusion
With these simple tweaks, we can elevate our text-chat game to a whole new level. Being clear and considerate makes all the difference. So, let’s strike the right balance of the use acronyms to avoid confusion, skip the empty greetings to improve response times, and embrace transparency to reduce stress and ultimately make our communication better!
