Words does not matter if your message is not received?

V.T. Arun ram kumar
3 min readApr 13, 2021

“You have a message!” or “You have a letter!”- It all started here…

Imagine, how one would react to his phrase. Outcome of a message would be based on the mood of the reader/situation. This phrase would create love, happy, pride, expectations, anger, controversy and much more in everyone. If this phrase have such strong emotions attached, then imagine the impact an inside message would create. With message covering every corner and spaces, filled with words that creates soundless sounds into our loud mind.

“Words”- nothing but a jumble of alphabets.. that’s all.

Yes! “that’s all” and nothing but many strings attached, that sounded and read in different tones. Some read with curiosity, some with casualness, some with cautious and some with a pride. In all 4 cases, the receiver need to get the message right. Yes!, the message should be received as intended. Other wise the message loose its value. That’s it.

In old days, one would wait weeks(even months) to receive a message. Sometime they might have even forgotten on their awaiting message. Some may have even moved out or met each other in person. Even at that moment, when a message is received, lot of emotions(through thoughts) are experienced while reading a message.

In current days, messaging because very easy and fast. The value of waiting has reduced and different mode of transfer got increased, like through emails, whatsapp, telegram, etc… Even though, the messages started reaching faster than before, the time taken to read messages because complicated. They became very complex in the form of word, that got into or transformed into abbreviations, short hand, jargon, doodle, emoji, GIF and much more.

A message usually is only of 2 thing, “ to be convey” and “to be read”. If either one fail on their responsibility, then that message is lost — forever. A sender’s role and responsibility is to make sure to convey what was intended and a reader’s is to read as it was intended. Here, the more responsibility lies with the sender than a reader. A sender creates emotion and life to a message and a reader receives that emotion and creates that life back.

“Emotion” - a strong feeling deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others.

Many things can be created through messages, like love, happiness, pride, controversy, hate, anger, skill and much more. Some time vise versa. A sender should not only focus on sending message but also on the reader’s ability in understanding your message. This might sound too crazy or many may not agree on this. But it is true.

Those who don’t agree, think about a message which you received that did not make any sense** or made you read couple of times. What was you mood on that moment in time?

**Can be words that you did not know or too poetic or made to search other sources for meaning that eventually made you slow in reading.

In all these, if the sender does not convey his/her intention, then the message fail poorly.

“Poor message” - irrespective to any level of knowledge in writing skills, if the message does not make oneself understand easily.

“Message sent successful” is not equal to “Message received successful”

“You got a message!” does not mean “He got the message!”

Many showcase writing skills in messages without the expectation of the reader skillset. If both sides are not balance equally, then the message fails.

In other words if the sender does not value the reader’s knowledge, then there is no point in being knowledgeable.

“knowledgeable”- intelligent and well informed.

Conclusion:

  • Use simple words. A reader must understand your message. Keep it simple and sweet.
  • Don’t showcase your vocabulary/knowledge here. There are lot of other mediums for that.
  • This saves time of the reader and the sender.
  • Don’t short hand your message. You may forget the actual spelling in future and may also keep the reader in puzzle about the abbreviation.
  • Always start positive and end positive. This will help you when your are expecting a response from other side.

Imagine, you are alone floating in ocean. Sending a message through a bottle.. “How will you convey your message to others?”

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