After the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world today mostly relies on text messages and video conferencing services and apps to communicate with one another. These two mediums of communications had played a large part of our lives even before the pandemic, but nowadays everyone uses these methods of communication, because nobody meets in person anymore. While text messages are quick and useful when you want to tell somebody about something really fast, they also have their downsides, and while video conferencing is convenient if you want an almost in-person experience, it has its caveats as well. As a result, you aren't going to get perfection from either of these two communication mediums. However, they can shape how you think about writing, and perhaps even improve the quality of your everyday writing. While most video conferences demand a more formal style, text messages are often very informal and require very little effort to type.
There are several ways that communicating via text message can shape instances of communication. I find the most impactful way to be the feeling that you need to get text messages out quickly and type fast, otherwise the person you're chatting with will begin to get impatient because you're taking too long choosing your words and thinking about what you're going to say. This is one of the downsides of text-message communication; you're obligated to rush to send things out and respond within hours, maybe minutes, of receiving a request. In some situations, like if you type quickly or you think of answers right away, this may not be a problem. You can rattle out a text message instantly without much trouble. However, when the question you're asked is a large one, you may not be able to think of a response on the spot; hence, you'll have to come back when the idea pops into your mind. Of course, you also are obligated to respond nigh immediately, because the person who asked you the question expects a response quickly. The truth is, however, that most people are perfectly comfortable with receiving a response a couple days later, and many people are deceived because they think that they need to respond back so fast that the response will be poorly written.
The issue mentioned above plagues most users of text-message communication, and is the most major impediment to using this form of communication. The next one involves the formality of how you write text messages. Normally, when you send emails (e.g., to your professor) you need to be formal, and shouldn't include slang, lowercase I's, and informal elements like that (the image shows what I mean.) You also shouldn't use emojis. But when you're in a text message, you can be as informal as you want. In fact, most people expect that you should use bad grammar and slang when typing text messages, because it's simply the atmosphere of texting. People may get upset they see extremely formal messages, because they expected quite the opposite. Texting is mainly where all the slang we use today originated from, and it continues to be a major center for it. This is another fairly-major problem with texting that emailing solves, although some people, for some reason, choose to be highly informal in emails as well. As you can see, the formality of writing depends mostly on the person who's writing it.
The third important point about texting is how it's easy to use, much easier compared to writing an email. This has a slight tie-in to the first issue, because easy to use doesn't always mean good. In this case, it means you can type out text messages quickly and then slam the enter button to have it sent, whereas with an email, you have to open your email app, create a new email, write the contents, enter the email addresses of the people you want to send it to, and then press the send button, whereas with texting, you can just open the app, type your message, and send it out. Of course, this is subject to poor spelling and grammar, but some people don't care about that at all. We writers often spend a lot of time fussing over grammar and word choices, which is why we find texting to be very rushed, but sometimes it can be for the better. For example, if you've had an injury and you want to let a family member know immediately, it would be much quicker to pull out your phone and type out a text message than to pull out your phone and go through the process of configuring an email.
The fourth and the fifth points are very similar to each other. The fourth one has to do with the readability of text messages. Emails tend to be much longer than texts, and the readers of emails tend to be much more accustomed to long paragraphs and detailed sentences than the readers of texts. For instance, a text might be one or two sentences long on average, which makes it very readable, meaning that the average person will enjoy reading it because it isn't too long and it won't take all day for them to read it. An email, on the other hand, might be a few paragraphs long or more, and, depending on the type of reader, they may get bored and sick of reading it and close the email program. That's another reason why texting is more efficient than most other forms of communication. The fifth and final one has to do with the length of text messages. I've observed that text messages rarely go above 100 words, and that's because no one wants to go through the bother of typing that much, and no one wants to read that much either. So, most of the time, text messages are short and not very detailed, but easy to read.
Texting excludes two types of people. These people are novelists and writers who take their time to write emails, text messages, and books, and don't want to rip out paragraphs so fast they get dizzy. Text messages are not for these people at all, because texting requires speed and a lack of attention to detail, as surprising as that sounds. The second type of people are those who strive to be professional-sounding and formal, because crafting sentences so that they sound formal also takes time. These people will be quickly and easily shut out by the fast-moving dynamics of text messages, so texting is also not for these people. The average person, however, the guy who doesn't care about punctuation, grammar, and spelling, will become quite fond of text messages.
Overall, the primary insight--the main takeway--from this close analyzation of texting is that texting isn't really that good when you look at it from a carefulness and conciseness standpoint. If you're in a rush and you like to be speedy all the time, no matter what you're doing, then texting is perfect for you. However, if you're slow, Tortoise-like, and cautious about everything you do (and you're a grammar fanatic), then you should choose emailing over texting. Looking at it from a length standpoint, however, texting is obviously the better option. It provides shorter messaging and an easier-to-read experience than emailing. But in the end, I think texting is sort of in the middle. It works for some people, and doesn't work for other people. It's pretty much your choice which one you want to use.
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