Have you ever had something you've said, something that you thought was crystal perfectly clear, misunderstood or misinterpreted by others? Has that unintentional or misinterpreted comprehension caused friction, or hurt or anger?
I think that if you write or speak you probably have. We all have.
Tone, nuance, choice of words, where we choose to place the words, they're the problem. It's right back to that old saw, 'it's not what you say, it's how you say it'. Whoever said that was a genius, because s/he is spot on right.
Person A says so-and-so and Person B hears or sees it as such-and-such (or, in the spirit of this post, as 'suck-and-suck') and, there you go: misunderstanding.
It's not that the individual words Person A used were wrong, or that Person B is ignorant. It's just that when Person A strung the chosen words together, Person B misread or misheard what was written or said. Perhaps the phrasing was just a little bit off and the strung-together words came across in a manner different than what was intended. It might even be, in the case of written words in a letter or e-mail, that nuance is misplaced and what was intended to be clarifying instead comes across as accusatory.
In cases like those, it's not the Word's problem. It's the User's problem, or maybe the Hearer's problem. In either case, it's the problem of Language.
I love Words. I like some more than others. I wrote a post a while back about some Words that I like. Plethora. That's a cool word. It slips around inside your mouth and glides off the tongue - try it. Try saying it out loud. Sublime is another one I like. I could go on all day (scintillating).
So it's not Words, by themselves, because Words are cool. They hang around, lounging in the corners of our minds, waiting for us to drop by and borrow them. It's when they get into groups that the problem starts.
Paragraphs are a group, a crowd of words that, when combined, can behave like a soccer crowd in Europe. That's the game in which football is played with round balls instead of 'prolate spheroid' balls. (Now THAT is a cool pair of words and that's how an American football's shape is defined.) Or like a bunch of protestors in Ferguson or Baltimore - breaking things up, burning things down.
You say something. You pick your words based on the meaning you want to convey. It's more than a couple of words. It's a paragraph, or maybe two or three. The individual words you chose and strung together were well-intended. It's just you, trying to be helpful and benign, but it's misinterpreted by your audience or, if to a bunch of people, by some.
In response, from someone else, another something is said. It's a sentence that begins 'You are'.
What does that sound like to you? Just those two words, standing all by their lonesome. Think about it, picture it in your mind. 'You are...'
'You are...' Hmm. To me it calls up a finger-waving scold. A parent leaning over a child, wagging that finger until it's just about ready to fall off.
One-on-one that is demoralizing. In front of a group, devastating because the scoldee is likely going to have to interact with that group and that scold will be there, front and center in everyone's mind for at least a little while.
Now that's a matter of interpretation, of course. Here, out of context, that 'You are' could precede 'brilliant' (yes, I am, thanks *blushes* and turns head). Or, it could precede a message that's intended to be helpful, clarifying, or corrective. But there we are, back to the Words.
'You' by itself is benign, unhurtful. 'Are' is the same, it doesn't do anything significant. Together, particularly if they follow an identifier, a name. 'Philippa, you are...', it takes on a different flavor. They are, together, forming that hooligan crowd. If the crowd grows to something bigger, to a Paragraph, it can become a riot - and not necessarily a laugh riot.
I write. I write a lot. I write at work. I write for simple pleasure. I write for outright fun - because I love words. Still, despite all the practice, I make mistakes with my Words that run into Paragraphs. What I think is clear might not be to someone else. It ends up causing trouble - my hooligans break free and start kicking things over. Someone else might come along and, thinking the canister they're holding has water instead of kerosene, they fling it and... conflagration.
The takeaway from all of this is that it's important to keep your Words in line. Straighten them up. Inspect them for potential fireworks. Move them or change them out if necessary. Be gentle with your Words, be careful with your Paragraphs and, if in doubt, ask for a monitor to make sure that your individual Words won't collect into a bad Paragraph.
Take your Words out and play with them today, and I hope you have a lovely time.
Best~
Philippa
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