How You Say it Matters

It’s been said that “the worst distance between two people is misunderstanding.” Agreed. Be careful how you say things, especially when it comes to social media forums. I’m sure we’ve all had experiences with simple emails where our message was taken the wrong way, simply due to an ill chosen word or the fact that email doesn’t allow for inflections or tone. What one person reads is often different from what another person reads. It may be our mood, a previous conversation, or whatever else we bring to that particular moment upon reading that email comment. In other words, it’s very easy to miscommunicate.

The same goes for Facebook or Twitter. Actually, this holds especially true for Twitter where word count is an issue. We already need to keep it to 140 characters so finding just the right wording is of added importance.

We’ve all been hit over the head with the idea to read over your content before hitting the “send” button, but mostly that’s been to alleviate grammar or spelling errors. But I think it’s a great idea to add “tone” into that proofreading list. Step away from the content and read it again, thinking about all the various ways your words or sentiment may be misconstrued. Only after you’ve examined it that way would I suggest hitting “Tweet.”