This article will talk about all pros and cons of communication. It will equip the reader with facts about written communication in a lighthearted tone.
Ever imagined what this world would have been like had the primates not learned to write with stone on walls, bones, leaves and everything they could possibly find –
Just for a second imagine Egyptian pyramids without their elaborate stonework?
The wall of Berlin without graffiti during the Great Depression?
You want an even bleaker picture of life without written communication? Well, imagine yourself roaming on the streets of China without knowing a word of mandarin. And the worst thing that can happen to a person in a foreign land happens to - you get hungry, but you can’t really communicate in English so you try your luck at drawing .Now, unless you can draw and show the chef what is it that you want to eat, you can move around with a growling hungry stomach. I mean, yes you need to have better drawing skills than a two year to do that as well, but there is hope for you there.
Communication is crucial to human existence, which is why they keep the deadliest of criminals under solitary confinement until they plead guilty of their crime. The basic idea of communication between individuals or groups of people is to deliver a message.
Oral communication consists of making use of your epiglottis while the other makes use of your phalanges – that is your voice box and your fingers, learn up!
Process of written communication as per the details I could gather from Essay writers UK consists of a sender, a receiver and a mode of transmission through which information/message is transferred. Mode of transmission can vary from one situation to another; offices may use emails, fax, hand written MOUs, memos while at the same time teachers at school may use journals, type writers and computers.
Even Taylor Swift writes her songs before singing them – Look how successful she is in getting her message across to ‘swifties,’ each and every song of hers is broken down for Easter eggs (that are very cleverly and deliberately scattered through her songs) so you get my point. I hope you do or else I think you have been living under a rock.
Now that you have come so far already, don’t pull out the plug on me and read ahead
Was it not for the numerous correspondences that took place between historians we today would have had no clue about the Mayan temple, or the Pyramids, or the primates. It was through the record that was maintained by these genius men in khaki shorts and Phyrgian hats that we were able to know about our rich history.
Imagine if teachers and professors stopped handing out any notes, presentations or course outlines for that matter. Imagine the kind of world where you could hardly make sense of a class that you missed because there was nothing tangible presented in that class.
Everybody would perceive the information delivered in their own way leading up to a mix plate of unconceivable gibberish.
Written notes, slides and presentations make the dissipation of knowledge easier for the one delivering it and also for the one receiving it because a standardized format is available to all.
You can’t eat your words once they are out of your mouth – remember when Steve Harvey announced the wrong candidate as the winner of Miss World Beauty Pageant. That is what happens when you are mostly depending on oral communication, and not keeping your thoughts in check.
Taking the same situation as an example of written communication, you can see that the person who was responsible for sending in the envelope did nothing wrong in typing the winner’s name – that pretty much proves my argument. Written communication advantages can be this significant sometimes really blows my mind.
If you have been a Harry Potter fan like me you’d know the immense importance one letter from Hogwarts holds! But in Hogwarts they had letters that could speak too, like that one time when Ron stole his parent’s car and received a letter from his mother – still makes me giggle. Good old days. Anyways, the idea behind written communication is that it makes up for a piece of tangible agreement between two parties that cannot be negated.
Official documents like employment letters, letters of admission, affidavits are just a few to name to highlight the benefits of written communication. When something is present in writing it can be verified and cannot be negated by anyone whatsoever.
Advanced calculus, quantum physics, literature and the Schrodinger’s cat are a few aspects of education to name that everybody has a hard time understanding. Without written communication it would almost be impossible to understand how a cat can be alive and dead at the same time according to Schrodinger’s.
Understanding complex ideas is made easier through books that are avidly working their way through to provide individuals with understanding of complex ideas.
Written communication helps in delivering information that needs to go through official channels like employment letters and promotional offers. Verbally telling someone that they have been promoted neither looks professional nor leaves an evidence behind for the order.
Unless you are the dictator from the movie dictator, gesturing a beheading would only make you look like fool.
People can twist and turn your words to paint a totally different picture but when written communication comes right into equation, the chances of tempering go down significantly. For this reason only officials such as politicians and other high profile personnel issue press releases instead of arranging verbal press conferences to give out their statements on matters of state security.
Roman Senator, Cicero said: ‘Scripta Manent’ which if translated means ‘what is written, remains written’. This goes to show that written communication is like solid agreement that once made stays there in all its reality. There is nothing that can be done about it, except the minor changes.
Now let’s look at the downside of written communication because like everything that has its advantages it is bound to have some disadvantages:
This sounds like a vocal note fall out – and that is exactly what it is about. The biggest disadvantage of written communication is that one can never be sure of the tone of the text. It is hard for most people to explain how they said it when they said it.
Consider the numerous Facebook posts that are posted online, consider numerous texts that we send each other every day, consider the leaked emails from madam secretary – okay the may have been pretty obvious – so except that during our everyday conversations over IMs it gets hard to grasp the exact context in which something that has been said.
Written communication lacks personality, and emotional sentiments. It would look plain if someone proclaimed their feelings for you over text as compared to a dinner date out on the beach with a choir singing their favorite song in the background.
One of the biggest drawback of written communication is undoubtedly the lack of immediate feedback. Understand it like this:
It can be a painstaking process. It can get hard from time to time to communicate through written expression because many a times we don’t have the right vocabulary to say what we want to say through text, and only our facial expressions can convey what we really mean.
Once I wrote an email to my supervisor and forgot to add the appropriate salutation whatever happened next was beyond what I had expected. Hence, written communication can sometimes get in your way of having a fruitful conversation.
It is not just professional documents that require full attention and planning, but also day to day affairs like texts messages from your crush that sometimes require your whole girl gang to brainstorm to create the appropriate reply.
If you need to write to communicate, you obviously need to have something to write on as well. This only means that you will be using up more resources to relay your message. So the extra use of resources involved can sometimes hamper the process of effective communication.
Being in a place that has no resources you can use to your benefit can make written communication a problem rather than a solution to your problem.
If you have created a tangible document that contains details of your conversation and dealings with someone you have actively put yourself up for a probable privacy invasion attempt. Ron Swanson from Parks and Recreation was well aware of threats that written documents posed which is why he always destroyed documents and carried nothing with himself that would lead back to him.
Such a role model he was.
Written communication limits the number of readers, because simply not everyone is well read and understands the intricacies of language. If one tones down the difficulty of language the message could get lost amidst the efforts of making it simpler.
For instance someone is defining pacific:
It was a deep blue see, with crystal clear water that ebbed and flowed with a constant vigor.
The above mentioned phenomenon may not seem so easy to comprehend for most people hence shortening it down to:
It is a blue sea
Can really takeaway the charm from the whole description.
Official correspondence are full of flattery, whether you accept it or not. Sending out an email to your superior make it look superior, as if he was a Greek god in his previous life. Yes, sure he was indeed the god of underworld called Hades.
I am not even making this up, superiors don’t even bother replying to emails that do not contain a long five lined paragraph about how they have bestowed the world’s best job to you – and have given you peanuts in return.
There is no right or wrong way of communication. The best or the most suitable form of communication can only be decided through doing an in depth analysis of the situation. No! All you really have to do is see what works better for you.
If you are someone who if proficient enough in their language skills then please go ahead and work your way out by using verbal communication, but know one thing you will have to revert to written communication from time to time because there is not so much that you can do about emails, and fax and official documents with your verbal communication – other than screaming from one end of the corridor:
“Sam your mail is here!”
So choose wisely whatever you choose!
In my career of providing essay help to students I have learnt that with students you can only use verbal communication because it helps in creating a bond with students, especially when you use the same vocabulary as they do.
While dealing with adult professional men you can only rely on written documents to fully engage them because at corporate level men and women alike are only interested in graphs, stats and even more graphs and even more numbers.
Naomi Tennant has an MSC Marketing and Business from the University of Edinburgh. She is currently working as a digital marketer at Mater Essay Writer.
