geek2geek

When I voiced the observation that “text lacks empathy” to a few friends of mine who are, if not necessarily trained writers, then at least a whole lot better at it than I am, they collectively went, “BUWHAT?!” Which is perfectly justified. Text can certainly invoke emotions in a reader. A good writer can make someone laugh, cry, or even kill. (A great writer can make them snort milk out their nose). So how can I say that text lacks empathy?

text strips emotion, writers put it back

Speech, and other forms of face-to-face communications, contain all sorts of undertones that we’re only dimly aware of. Let’s look at a simple question:

Are you done yet?

Were I to speak it I can convey emotion with a whining voice, slumped down in my seat showing boredom. I can say it with an excited voice while bouncing up and down conveying hope and excitement. I can say it with a neutral tone and expression, it’s a simple query. I can ask with annoyance which makes it more about expressing “you’re late and I’m pissed” then a request for information. Even the history of the conversation becomes important. Even the most polite query becomes annoying when you ask it for the twentieth time.

Now consider how a writer might write in missing emotions.

“Are you done yet?” she asked hopefully.

Bob took a sip of his coffee, did some routine instrument checks and asked his co-pilot “are you done yet?”

The roar came across the cubicle walls, his boss’ voice. “Are you done yet?”

See the difference? Unless you consciously put the emotion back in the same set of words can convey different feelings and even entirely different meanings.

we don’t write, we speak with our fingers

Here’s the problem: most of us are not writers. Aside from English class in high school and maybe a mandatory essay writing class freshman year in college (which I slept through — can you tell? I mean honestly, 8:30am and you want to discuss “What Is Literacy?” Wake me with my C-) when’s the last time you really examined the craft of writing? Probably never. Certainly not enough for something you do every day. And why not? We’re not writers but we think we are. Why? Because you’ve already learned a substitute for writing: speech.

If you’re like me — and the name tag says I am — when you write you hear a little voice in your head. Maybe it’s telling you to shoot the President to impress Jodie Foster (I hear she’s into Prime Ministers now), but it’s probably just your own voice speaking what you’re writing. This is fine. The trouble comes when you forget that all the EMPHASIS and STRESS and WILD HAND GESTURES and FUNNY LOOKS that are going on in your head aren’t coming out on the page. We don’t think of them much when we speak, they tend to come naturally, so it’s all too easy to not realize when they’re missing.

Our tendency is to fill in voids with our own negative emotions. Simple conversations can lead to serious miscommunication. Let’s say your manager is really excited about a new widget you’re working on, so they send you an IM, “Are you done yet?” You’re under lots of pressure, you’ve been trying to fix the same bug all day, and he’s the sixth person to ask in the last hour to ask! So you snap back, “no“!

The manager sees “no” and, having sent his query in a positive mood, interprets your response the same way. He doesn’t think anything special of it. Now you think your manager is pressuring you. The manager has no idea his message annoyed you and doesn’t understand why you’re yelling at him to get off your back at the next status meeting. Some simple missing emotions created a problem out of nothing.

can’t fix a problem unless you know about it

That’s the problem: we don’t realize there’s a problem. And it’s a hard problem to see. Going from the voice in your head to text on the screen there is no indication that anything is lost. No censor bleeping out parts. No red pen crossing bits out. No “emotions missing” icon. The loss is silent. If you’re not looking for it, you’d never know it happened.

Only after you realize there’s a problem can you start doing anything with it, and this one’s a big one. I screw it up all the time. Lately I’ve been referring to the incompatibilities between two pieces of software that’s been going on for years as a “war”. To me it’s just a shorthand, I read a lot of military history. Then the author of one found me on IRC:

<author> What do you mean a war?”
<Schwern> Oh, X doesn’t work and Y is hard to use and your stuff doesn’t do Z right.
<author> I’m at work, I don’t want to have an argument about it!
<Schwern> But I wasn’t arguing…

And I wasn’t, I just want it fixed. Thinking on it, “war” isn’t the most positive word I could have used especially when bringing bad news.

It’s not even necessarily a problem, just a circumstance to deal with. Text strips all the incidental communication that goes on face to face. Yatima pointed out that this can be a good thing. She’s right, it can. If you’re aware what’s going on you get to be in total control of what you’re transmitting. Once upon a time I worked at a place where the senior programmer was a brilliant and thoughtful guy but had a severe stutter. After working with him for a few weeks I got used to it, but it was quite a distraction at first. He realized this, and when he interviewed for the job he asked for it to happen over IRC. They agreed and his stutter did not get in the way of ascertaining his skills. He got the job.

If you come out of all of this with one idea it’s this: look closer at what you wrote and how it’s different from what you voiced. Think about how it will be received on the other end. Most of us aren’t trained communicators, but we are fantastic learners… as long as we know there’s something to be learned.