Context and Communication

How I learned the hard way to think about context and choosing the right medium - there's plenty of choice!

I love Twitter. A group of us from all over the world who are interested in language and words often send each other links and comments about language use. We also try to get useful tips out to others who use writing without thinking about it so much.

As you may know, Twitter messages are restricted to 140 characters – not words, characters. So there is no room for waffle or introductory fluff. And confusions can arise – like this:

I received a tweet from Anne Hickley (her Twitter ID is @anne_penguin), someone I have communicated with happily for a few months. It said

@janepenson (my twitter identity) "Please contact me ..."?

So, I looked up her last email with her phone number on it and gave her a call. I also tweeted to say I had left a phone message. She was very confused, tweeted that she had not asked me to contact her and wondered if I had muddled her up with someone else. Since she is represented on Twitter by a very distinctive penguin, I was absolutely sure it was her – so, I went back to her tweet and quoted the exact time and date. Then she saw what had happened.

A day or so earlier, there had been a Twitter ‘conversation’ running about alternative ways of saying “Do not hesitate to contact me if I can be of any further assistance”. Suggestions included: “Let me know if I can help” and “Feel free to contact me if I can help”. Anne was adding to this with her suggestion, but by now (all of 22 hours later) it was out of context and I didn’t make the connection. Life moves on very fast when you tweet.

This is a small example of what happens when any kind of written communication, definitely including emails, is sent without explaining enough context to help the reader to know who you are and what you are talking about. Between us we probably wasted at least 15 minutes trying to unravel this mystery. Multiply that minor misunderstanding by all of the carelessly written emails, texts and tweets that are sent every day in most businesses and you have a big pile of wasted time and frustration.  There are a couple of lessons to be learned here.

Ask yourself before you write:

1. Is the context clear?
Will your reader know who you are and what the context of your message is?

2. Are you using the right medium?
If we had emailed, we would probably have unravelled this sooner. Use Twitter for little one-off messages, links to interesting websites and comments that require no reply, but don’t rely on it for a two-way conversation – it’s a bit like shouting into a storm and hoping the first cousin of your postman’s daughter will hear you.

Also, Twitter is a very transitory medium where threads of conversation are not obvious. This led to our confusion – I forgot the discussion from the previous day and Anne forgot that she had commented. So – we are certainly both forgetful, but we have also learned something about how to and how not to use Twitter.

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