Tuesday, April 24, 2018

Misunderstandings


The internet is notorious for people misunderstanding each other. It's easy to do, I often re-read things I wrote a while ago and think to myself, "that could be read a number of ways". There are a couple of things that I try to do to avoid this (not always successfully) for example, realise that people can't hear your "internal-voice" so something that you write in humour or as sarcasm can often be taken literally. If in doubt about interpretation get someone to read your words back to you, if they don't understand the full-context then often a literal recitation uncovers ambiguity.

I find that Twitter is the worst culprit for this, with such a small word limit it's often difficult to say what you mean, and shortening stuff often leads to less resolution and more misunderstanding. Of course, sometimes less resolution is what you're after and you deliberately want something to be read in many potential ways. When on shaky-ground keeping your options open is sometimes a good approach, particularly if you need to retrace your thought process and take a different tack half way through.

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