I imagine no one else makes mistakes texting and emailing,
but I recently found myself in a whole lot of trouble.

Let's talk about communication. It's a process of
exchanging information to share knowledge, express
feelings, state our positions, or share our skills.
However, communication is more than words. It's made up of
verbal (words) and nonverbal (gestures, expressions, etc.)
messages.

Researchers in communication suggest that only 7% of a
message is sent through words and the rest is all nonverbal
expressions. A lot of the time it is what the person is not
saying, their inflection, their gestures, their expression,
their tone, and most importantly& #8212;your gut reaction to
what they've said—which speaks louder than words.
With texting and emailing you only get the written word
which definitely has its limitations, especially if you do
not know the person well. (That was my faux pas.)

When you type your communication, it is difficult to
express your feelings and intentions. Some emails have
added emoticons, but watching a little smiley-face jump up
and down is not quite the same thing. If someone sends you
a smiley-face, what is their true emotion? Are they
serious, lying, depressed, or being sarcastic?

When communicating with family and friends, you already
know their intentions and feelings toward you. If they
accidentally type something that sounds a little odd, you
assume the best. That doesn't always happen with
acquaintances. With emails and texting, we don't get the
chance to stop the person and ask, "What was that you
said?"?" All we see are those glaring words on the screen
that we are enraged about and quickly respond to without
thinking it through. People rarely text back and ask, "What
did you mean?" or "Could you explain?"

For some reason with the written word, what you type is
fact and not to be questioned. If someone typed it, they
meant it. But how often in verbal communication does
something come out wrong? In that case, we get the chance
to quickly say, "I didn't mean that the way it sounded."
Unfortunately, once the message is sent - it's sent. And
unfortunately, it might be sent to more people than you had
planned. (Another one of my faux pas.)

The current estimate is that more than ten million texts
and emails are sent each second and is rapidly replacing
all other forms of communication. Sad to think about when
you realize the importance of non-verbal communication. It
could explain why the number of internet scams are
increasing by exponential numbers. In 2007, The Internet
Crime Complaint Center reported these statistics:

o Online auction fraud was the most reported type of fraud
and accounted for 44.9% of consumers complaints

o Non-delivered merchandise and/or payment made up 19% of
complaints

o Check fraud represented 4.9% of complaints

o About 70% of the fraud victims were scammed through the
web

o About 30% of the victims were scammed by emails

Of course I'm not saying that you can't be duped in person,
but if someone shows up as my new financial advisor in an
unmarked white truck, wearing a red bandana and white
T-shirt, with tattoos and nervous flashy eyes, I'm probably
not going to do business with him...let alone let him in
the house.

As I was growing up, my mother used to recite this quote:

"Keep your words soft and sweet, You'll never know
from time-to-time, Which ones you'll have to eat."

Those words prove even more important today with the number
of words being sent by text and email. And you cannot
always be prepared for the way those innocent words will be
interpreted without your sweet voice and naïve nature
for them to judge you by.

Written communication used to be an art form in which
people took the time to think out. Now it is often a
hurried, thoughtless response. I have sent a number of
emails giving information and the immediate, clueless
responses amaze me. It is like the person didn't take the
time to actually read what I wrote, in some cases they've
come to the wrong conclusion and fired back a thoughtless
email. (Their faux pas.)

To sum up, here are a few things to remember when texting
or emailing:

1. Read each email or text slowly to make sure you
understand the meaning.

2. Think about your response before firing one back,
especially if you are angry.

3. Re-read your response for any errors. Spell checkers
won't always catch wording mistakes.

4. Check and make sure that who you are sending it to is
accurate.

5. Make sure that any sarcastic messages won't be
misinterpreted.

6. If you receive a text or email that offends you, take
the time to question the sender first before responding to
his/her statement.

7. Don't text or email while driving or distracted.

No, I am not going to tell you what actually happened with
my faux pas. I'll keep that between me and the thousands of
contacts that received my poorly-worded, emoticon-free
email. Hopefully, this is one communication I got right.