The Ways In Which We Communicate
The writing tone is different between the different types of communication such as texting, social network messaging, public posting, emailing, etc. This is because in each of these ways, we are addressing a different type of audience. For example, when we text our family members, the writing is very short and informal. When we post a message on our friend’s facebook wall, we are very relaxed about what we say. When we post a blog, we make the tone a little more serious since other people are also expected to read it. When we write an email to our professors, we are definitely more formal and we make sure there are no spelling mistakes in what we write. It is easy to see that the different ways in which we communicate call for different tones in our writing.
There are some rules in each of these types of writing. In texting, the rules are for keeping as short and simple as possible and using acronyms such as brb, for be right back, ttyl, for talk to you later, and many others. On facebook, not much rules apply except for the fact that the tone is usually kept at a very informal level and spelling and grammer is usually not kept an eye on. Within a blog, spelling and grammar are more important than facebook and the rule of getting the point across to many other people is the main goal. In an email, the goal would be to pass a message on to someone else with the rules of spelling and grammar kept in mind, especially when sending the message to a professor or an authority figure. In an email to a professor, we usually avoid everyday language, such as phrases like “see you later”, or “watsup?” The same way, texting people usually does not involve long email length writing or formal sentences that an email usually would.
Like I mentioned before, usually the audience decides on what you write and how you write it. If I were to tell a joke to a friend on her facebook profile, I normally would not send that joke to my professor through email. This is because I have a much more informal relationship with my friend than my professor, and even though both of those relationships mean a lot to me, its on a personal level that decides what tone I use hidden within my words.
