Why Email is Dangerous

This morning I was listening to KPBS, my local NPR station, and heard a certain sentence to begin a story. Read it out loud as the announcer did, with the emphasis on the underscored word. Here's the sentence: 

“You don’t have to have a lot of drinks to be a dangerous driver.”

What do you think the story was about? Texting and driving? Talking on the phone while driving? Dealing with screaming kids in the back seat?

Nope. None of the above. The story was about a study showing that a blood alcohol level of even 0.01% — virtually zero and well below the legal limit — is found in the case of many fatal car crashes. Are you surprised that was the topic? I was. The way the announcer read the opening line was misleading. She should have stressed a different word. Read the sentence again with the emphasis on lot: 

“You don’t have to have a lot of drinks to be a dangerous driver.”

Ah ha! The words have an entirely different meaning now, don’t they? They point to the idea that even one drink can be a problem for drivers.

This little exercise shows how important are tone, voice inflection, cadence and other verbal clues in communication. Never mind that on the radio or over the phone, for example, we lose all possibility of visual clues (gestures, body language, “lip-reading,” etc.), at least we have vocal patterns to help us. And in a face-to-face conversation or Q&A session we can ask for further explanation if the message isn’t coming across clearly.

But consider the written word. There it is, in black and white. Some ink on a page or shapes on a screen that are supposed to convey the author’s thoughts. You can’t ask questions. You don’t hear the inflection. You don’t have visual clues. He or she gets just one chance to communicate with you — one bite at the apple, so to speak. 

That’s why I often say that we talk to be understood, but we write to make it impossible to be misunderstood. 

Even careful writers face a challenge, so consider how sloppy most people are when banging out emails. They need to shoot off a quick message, so they don’t take the time to proofread and may even rely on “spell check” or “autocorrect,” often with disastrous results. In one study reported by the Huffington Post, 65% percent of respondents view even simple grammar and spelling mistakes as "shoddy," saying such errors would cause them to "have no faith" in the person who sent the email.

It may seem that, like King Canute commanding the tide not to rise, I’m fighting a hopeless cause. But if this little essay (which with multiple drafts took me over two hours to write) makes even one of my readers more careful in their emails or other written work, it will have been worth the effort.

** Stay well, keep in touch, and above all: proof your work! **