The non-verbal signals we send with our written communication
I recently read Erica Dhawan’s book Digital Body Language, which has such great insights about how people are evaluating trust based on the signals we send when we communicate. Her point in the book is that trust is built by more than the language we read: the combination of all our choices creates a signal for the audience. What she emphasizes is that we read the contextual signals of written communication much like we read body language during a face-to-face conversation.
We know what you mean when you say “We’re going to have to take another look at this” because we can hear your voice, see your face, read your posture. All those things add up to tone, the emotions we ascribe to a bit of communication. And, Dhawan suggests–despite our long-held belief that writing doesn’t have a voice or a face or posture, that writing doesn’t have tone in the way that we know speaking does–it turns out that writing does have non-verbal signals that we can interpret as positive or negative, enthusiastic or uninterested, overwhelmed or bored. And we need to be aware of those signals so that we can make choices about the signals we send.
While I’ve focused mainly on language and how the words we write create tone, I also help professionals understand punctuation, emojis, spacing, and formatting; how people read; when to send emails and when not to; and how long to wait for an email response. All those things are the non-verbal signals that shape tone in writing–and Dhawan agrees.
Communication experts, then, are thinking about how tone is crafted in written messages and how the non-verbal (that means not words, so we’re talking about any aspect of the message that is not the words themselves) signals work to create that tone.
Here’s what you need to know about the non-verbals of tone in professional communication:
Timing
We can break down timing into two parts: when a message is sent and when a response is received.
Guidelines for Sending Messages: Professional messages should rarely be sent outside of the receiver’s work hours. Basically, sending messages between 5pm and 9am is not recommended. Why? Because it’s a bit rude. We shouldn’t be asking people to work outside of their work hours. Unless it’s an emergency and they are the best person or only person to help–or you have an agreement with them about when they are on call or are otherwise available to you outside of their regular work hours.
What if they work in another time zone? If you know the time zone, send the message between 9am and 5pm in their time zone. If you don’t know where they are, send it between 9am and 5pm in your time zone. If you know they work hours other than 9am-5pm, send it during their work hours. As much as possible try to signal with the timing of your message that you do not expect them to work on your schedule. That’s rude.
What if it is an emergency? Don’t write them. Writing is by its nature asynchronous. That means I write the message on my time and you read it on your time. So, emergencies should not be communicated via email. They should be communicated via synchronous methods: phone call or in person. If you call and they don’t pick up (which they won’t, no one answers their phone anymore), leave a voicemail (that they won’t listen to), then write them an email that begins with “I tried to call you” so they can see immediately that you attempted to use a synchronous method of communication to talk to them in real time.
Guidelines for Receiving Messages: As I already mentioned, writing is asynchronous. So expecting an immediate response is antithetical to writing’s entire purpose. If you need or want an immediate response, don’t write. If you are writing an email, you need to be willing to wait *at least* 24 hours for a response. That is a minimum. Responses may take longer. You don’t know what the recipient of your email has on their task list. You don’t know if they are at an all-day professional development workshop where checking their email would be noticed and considered rude. You don’t know if they have 10 other emergencies to handle before yours. Basically, you don’t know what they are doing when they receive your message, how many other messages they received, or the order of importance. All of us have to prioritize. Very often, the things that I most want to do are not the things that demand my attention. I want to write to my Irish friend who makes fudge, but that’s not as urgent as responding to 9 undergraduates who are struggling to pass my class.
Be patient: If you need an answer in less than 24 hours, choose another method of contact–phone, text, office visit, instant message. If you can wait 24 hours, then you can send an email. And if someone takes longer than 24 hours, be gracious. We shouldn’t feel bad that we have to prioritize our time and attention. Try not to respond with “Sorry for the delay” because we aren’t sorry. We prioritized.
Provide an expected response date: One of the easiest ways to help others prioritize your messages is by providing an expected (or needed) response date. Tell them when the thing you are asking for needs to be done by and give them a reason to do it by then: “The client needs the finalized contract by June 15. When do you think you can have the review completed by?” This accomplishes several goals of helping the reader prioritize their responsibilities, getting your request clearly in line with their other tasks, showing them respect by allowing them to set their own deadline, and helping them understand whose goals the deadline is trying to meet.
When someone takes too long, because you didn’t help them prioritize or they are ignoring your message, send a follow up. The nicest way to do that is by asking a question like “Have you had a chance to look at ___________?” or “Did you have any questions about __________?” Sure, these aren’t going too feel great to the other person who forgot about your task or was hoping you would forget about it, but they are nicer than “I was just following up on x” which doesn’t really get a conversation going. It just says I was thinking about this task when what we really want to know is whether you have thought about the task.
2. Medium/Channel/Way
How we choose to communicate sends another signal to the recipient about our investment and expectations. We have lots of different paths and each of them provides slightly different information to our audience. The basic choices we have are face-to-face, phone call, text/instant message, email. Keep in mind that face-to-face/phone calls don’t need to be spontaneous and can be scheduled ahead of time. In that case you are choosing to convey the message at the scheduled time rather than hoping you catch the person in their office or when they will pick up the phone. We can look at what each type of communication is good for and where it fails.
Face-to-face (which includes video):
Upside: When we speak face-to-face, we provide each other with the most non-verbal information. They can see our face, see our eyes (which indicate where our attention is), see our posture. And they get all that visual information on top of hearing our voice and our words. This method of communication allows us the best interpretation of how people feel, of the tone that underlies what they are saying. When we communicate face-to-face, people tend to feel that we care about them because we are investing our time to be with them throughout the communication and we are being vulnerable with allowing them access to our faces, voices, and bodies: all the non-verbal signals we send through our physical presence.
Upside 2: Also, face-to-face communication allows for us to convey complex ideas. In a meeting, we can talk about as many things as we have on the agenda (and things that aren’t on the agenda), moving from one to the next without needing to connect each item to the one before. We can ask questions. We can clarify, add to, change, imagine, propose, reject, etc. while we are together in real time. This capability allows for discussions, engagement on a topic, and multiple participants in a way that writing cannot because only one person gets to write at a time.
Downside: But face-to-face communication is more spontaneous than writing. We don’t have the opportunity to plan or edit the words that we say. Sure, we can start to say something, stop, and try again, but the person is right there watching and listening as we revise our messages in real time. So even if we want to change what we said or start over or try again, the person already heard us the first time when we didn’t quite have our thoughts together and let slip something that wasn’t quite as crafted as what we wanted to say. You know, when you tell a friend that their new haircut looks awful, I mean, not that bad, but pretty messed up, I mean, it’ll grow out.
Summary:
Face to face communication is
✅ Caring: Tone is visible and audible
✅ Complex: Many ideas or back and forth conversations
✅ Scalable: 1-1000 people at a time
🚫 Careful or Crafted
Phone call:
Upside: Like face-to-face communication, phone calls have a lot of non-verbal information for the audience through our voice. Where face-to-face has voice + face/body, a phone call at least has a voice. Our voices reveal a lot of information about how we feel. We change our pitch slightly depending on power relationships; we change our pace depending on our excitement or boredom; we change our enunciation depending on our perception of the other person’s ability to understand our words. Voices convey a lot about tone.
Upside 2: We tend to use phone calls when we need to get in touch with a person immediately, but we don’t know where they are and writing would be too slow. A good in-between is text message, but since that is asynchronous, we don’t know or can’t predict when we will get a response. We hope soon, but we don’t know. Calling someone indicates that you want to talk to them now. Of course they can choose whether to pick up or not, but the act of calling signals the desire to connect in that moment.
Upside 3: Like face-to-face communication, phone calls can address multiple ideas or complex conversations. You can go back and forth, so people can introduce new ideas, ask questions, make suggestions, and everything else while you are talking.
Downside: Like face-to-face communication, phone calls are typically unscripted, so you’ll say something, get no response from the other end, and try to rephrase. We run the risk of saying something inappropriate, thoughtless, or unclear when we don’t have the time to review our language.
Downside 2: It’s hard to talk to a group over the phone. Sure, you can do it: conference call. But, since people can’t see each other, we don’t have access to all the cues that usually signal who wants to speak (in take of breath, open mouth, leaning forward, gesturing, etc). We end up talking over each other, interrupting each other, and often unsure of exactly who is even on the call and who is speaking.
Downside 3: People rarely pick up.
Summary:
Phone call communication is
✅ Caring: Tone is audible
✅ Immediate: Let’s talk now
✅ Complex: Many ideas or back and forth conversations
🚫 Careful or Crafted
🚫 Scalable: 1-3 people at a time
🚫 Ignored
Text/Instant Message:
Upside: Text messages are used so frequently because they combine the best parts of writing and face-to-face/phone call communication. First, they are more immediate than other forms of writing. Essentially, since phone calls have always signaled immediate attention and then we moved phones into our pockets, text messages provided a way to send information and get a pretty quick response without the requirement of actually being present at the same time together. I can write to you on my time and you can respond on your time, but since we all know that your phone is in your pocket, the expected response time is much shorter than an email (which is also in your pocket, but requires slightly more–1–clicks to get to. And, the timeline for most media has to do with historical and cultural references. We had text messages on our phones long before we could get email easily on the same device).
Upside 2: A text has the possibility of being crafted because we can take the time to choose our words. I understand that not all of us take advantage of this function, but it exists whether we use it or not. The choice of language is directly connected to the development of entirely new vocabularies for texting. We created abbreviations, emoticons, and then emojis specifically for this new medium because in its original form, the number of characters was limited and/or cost money. And that language was a response to the immediacy of the channel. To get a quick response, I need to express an idea in a quick way. We have the ability to make choices about the language we will use to write, to delete, edit, revise, use autocorrect, etc before we actually convey the message to the other person. And now we even have the opportunity to stare at those three little dots…while we wait for you to craft your response.
Upside 3: Emojis mean that text messaging has more tone symbols than traditional writing. Because the format is brief, and brief messages usually feel rude, we used technology to create emoticons–faces out of punctuation marks–to help indicate how we felt about a message. Then, as technology advanced, those emoticons become emojis. And now we have a plethora of pictures that we can integrate into our writing to change the way that writing is received, even when people can’t hear our voices or see our faces.
Neutral: Text messages are typically for one person, sometimes for a group, and rarely for a large group (enter spam). Like phone calls, most text messages target 1-3 people.
Neutral: Writing is not good for many ideas at one time. You can’t put a lot of different ideas in one text message. That’s not expected. It’s not desirable. And it rarely achieves your goals. Text messages work like a conversation with a back and forth. You type one thing, the other person response. You type another thing, the other person response. This is another one of those facts that make texting so popular. It is *like* a conversation without actually requiring a conversation.
Downsides: As far as work, texting is still thought of as informal or personal, meaning not every corporate culture is going to expect or allow texting. Not everyone wants to have work on their personal phones and not every company wants to provide company phones. Sure, some companies allow or encourage texting, but not all of them. And any written messages sent while you are working or on behalf of your company can become part of any legal documentation. So texts, which seem personal and informal, might suddenly find themselves in the courtroom.
Downside 2: Yes, emojis are helpful for crating tone, but they can also be misinterpreted. Not everyone has the same understanding of what the same pictures mean. For some people an eggplant is an item on a grocery list, and for others…We still don’t have access to the actual physical person and the signals we are best at reading to interpret tone. We have a semblance of tone, a substitute, a literal symbol.
Summary:
Text/Instant Message communication is
✅ Immediate: Let’s talk soon
✅ Careful or Crafted–at least it’s an option
✅ Caring: Emojis 🥳
🌗 Scalable: 1-3 people at a time
🌗 Complex: Many ideas or back and forth conversations
🚫 100% Professional
🚫 Potentially confusing
Email
Upside: You have a lot of control over how you write, edit, revise, and generally choose language to communicate. We expect email to be crafted and considered. We expect you to have reviewed it before you hit send. Part of that expectation is because email is a longer, slower bit of writing than a text message or instant message. We don’t think of it as immediate and it doesn’t have the same expectations of immediacy. But another part of that expectation is because email is the currency of professional spaces. Email allows us to create a written record that can be referred to later, so you’d better have thought about what you were going to say and how you said it.
Upside 2: Email is a great way to communicate to a group of people. If you have a committee or an organization where you need everyone to have the same information: email. You can email one person. You can email a few people and differentiate between who is supposed to response (To) and who is allowed to respond but not expected to (CC). You can also email a thousand people all at once (BCC–protects privacy and prevents reply all).
Neutral: Documentation is a good and bad function of email. It is excellent for a company to have all its work documented…until it isn’t. Basically, we want a written record, and email allows us to have that. But we really, really hope that we don’t need to use that written record in court. And we really don’t want to have to read our emails out loud to a judge.
Neutral: Expected response time is 24hrs. As we’ve already addressed in the Timing section, Email is asynchronous and doesn’t have the same immediacy expectations as Text or Instant Messaging, so we have to be willing to wait at least 24hrs for a response.
Downside: Writing is not good for complex ideas. Most people don’t want to read any of their email, let alone long emails, emails that don’t have a point or that don’t have a clear and obvious point, emails with big paragraphs, or emails where they have to scroll down and keep reading. An email can handle more than one thing, so it’s better than a text message, but once you get over 5 things, you will completely lose the audience. That’s probably true for an agenda in a meeting–more than 5 bullets and people just don’t want to show up. But face-to-face and phone conversations can flow from one idea to the next in a way that writing just can’t.
Downside: Writing doesn’t have tone. People can’t see you or hear you. And because of the documentation responsibility of email, you pretty much can’t use emojis to help. You just have words. And most people aren’t great at manipulating language to achieve particular outcomes–regardless of your grade in your one required college writing course. What creates tone in writing is familiarity: when a phrase becomes so overused in a particular way that we can hear what anyone would sound like when they write it. For example, “Per my last email” will never sound nice no matter who says it.
Summary:
Email communication is
✅ Careful or Crafted
✅ Scalable: 1- 1000 people at a time
🌗Professional because it provides a record
🌗 Takes at least 24hrs
🚫 Complex: Many ideas or back and forth conversations
🚫 Caring–no emojis with most people
When we are thinking about the signals we send to our audience, when we send messages and when we expect responses are a big part of not being rude. But we also need to think carefully about how we choose to send our messages because each method of communication has different benefits and limitations.
When we understand how each type of communication serves us–and how it doesn’t–we are better able to make choices about which one is appropriate in which situations. The signals we send are just as important in our professional communication as they are in our personal communication–maybe more so because our professional audiences don’t know us as well as our family and friends. And ensuring our communication choices are respectful before we even get to the body of the message can help us build better relationships with our audiences.