The Misinterpretation of Texts
“Finding the right words to say through text can be hard, and oftentimes you could end up writing something that can have more meanings then you thought it did and end up with a confused receiver.”
Have you ever had something exciting to tell your friends or family and decided okay I’ll send it through text and when they read it and respond, you get this: “k cool.” Here is an example:
This is me texting my mother my ideas for journalism, and this was her response.
Finding the right words to say through text can be hard, and oftentimes you could end up writing something that can have more meanings then you thought it did and end up with a confused receiver. During a time when communication is mainly through text — whether that be emails, messages, social media posts — understanding the potential for misinterpretation is important in order to improve personal and professional interactions.
One of the main causes of misinterpretation of text is lack of context, Here’s an example: This person put “date?” which could have many different meanings, in the context where the person was asking for the exact date of the reunion. The receiver took it as bringing a social or romantic partner to the reunion. Instead the person asking could have put “What’s the date?” Two additional words could change the whole context.
Another cause of misinterpretation of text could be wording, and here's an example:
The person is asking his friend Mark “Dude what is your street name?” Mark then literally tells his street name to his friend. But by simple changes to his wording like “Dude what is your address,” this misinterpretation could be avoided. Here’s another example of how wording can make a a difference.
"Your report writing needs work” instead of "You're doing a great job overall, but I think there’s room for improvement in your report writing." While one piece of feedback is rather harsh and can discourage by focusing only on what one is doing bad on. The other piece of feedback is encouraging yet still is able to suggest areas for improvement. The last feedback probably gave the receiver enough encouragement to keep working hard to improve their report.
The final cause of misinterpretation that we’ll discuss is how messaging lacks non-verbal cues, here’s an example of this: Now here we see the person on the right asking a serious clarifying question over text, and Brenna responded saying “No, it’s fine”, Based off what you read do you think brenda is saying it’s fine in a lighthearted friendly way. Or do you think this friendship is officially over? The truth is there’s no way to tell, we don’t know if Brenna is smiling behind the screen and moving her hands in a way to show that there’s no hard feelings or if she’s hovering over the block button with a pissed off face.
The point of this was not to over analyze and state the obvious but to show the many ways that text can be misinterpreted and state the importance of clear communication. Even though the pictures I’ve shown of misinterpretation of text are pretty funny and lighthearted, it’s not always that way. Not knowing how to be clear when communicating, especially when it’s not face to face, can be costly. As stated earlier, these days communication is mainly through text, whether that be emails, messages and social media posts, so the risk of misinterpretation is higher than ever and will continue to grow. So I encourage readers to think about how they communicate, be more empathetic in interpreting others, and maybe even improve their own writing practices to avoid misinterpretation in the future.