“…” Means Trouble

Which of the rhetorical canons is most important? Delivery. Anyone who’s even tried to attempt standup comedy will tell you that delivery is the most important part of a speech.

Everyone knows the main problem with text messages and online correspondence is the lack of ability to convey tone (let alone the difference in perception between generations of text forms like the ellipses and the exclamation point). This makes all the difference in knowing when someone is being sarcastic, joking, serious — but why? What is so wildly important about tone that makes it the one thing in text that can determine the recipient’s reaction?

Tone in text is just delivery. It’s the reason that you see a difference between “no!” and “No.” and “no…”. It can determine exactly how someone feels about your message, whether they take it seriously or not, whether they choose to take offense at it or not. It doesn’t matter what you say — if you deliver it in a sarcastic manner, it can be the most sincere and heartfelt apology, but it still won’t come across right.

Though of course in text, word choice is part of the delivery, since you can’t always properly convey vocal emphasis and pauses. For you, reading this, you will likely have a completely different interpretation of how this sentence sounds. Perhaps it sounds surprised in your head, perhaps bored. Is it clearer if I vary the punctuation? Include… pauses, perhaps, to help convey the inflection? What about determining emphasis, showing you where I mean to put the force of a phrase? All of this, together, creates a more… varied, more realistic — more accurate representation of what it sounds like to me, and now, to you.

That’s as close as text format can come to cultivated delivery. This is often overlooked in most written articles or pieces of text, probably because even with every effort towards telling your audience exactly how you mean for them to read your work, they still aren’t going to hear it the way you intended. That’s just how it happens to be! The voice reading things inside your head (which, by the way, isn’t your voice) won’t speak the same way I thought it might.

Text is often considered less effective than audible vocal persuasion. A phone call works better than an email, a face-to-face meeting is more memorable than a series of messages. The difference is in the delivery — and the ability to deliver.