Jenny Morse, PhD
Author and CEO

As an expert in business writing, I focus mostly on how we use language to communicate ideas effectively. But communication is more than words.

We first learn language through its sound. In his book, This is the Voice, John Colapinto explains “the music of speech–its expressive prosody–emerges before words. Tunes before lyrics…a language’s specific prosody, its unique melody and rhythm, emerge in a baby’s babbling before those sing-songy articulations are molded into specific words” (p. 52). All this means that our first sense of language is its music, its tones, the rises and falls, the movement of the breath–not grammar. This is why Shel Silverstein (“Runny lent to the wibrary / And there were bundreds of hooks”), Dr. Seuss (“One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish”), even Lewis Carroll (“Twas brillig, and the slithy toves”) were poetry geniuses; they captured the rhythms and rhymes of English in a way that mirrored what children hear when adults talk–not the meaning but the sound.

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In my classes on writing, I remind professionals of this fact: that sound is the primary experience of language and writing is secondary. That the sound of language has many components: pitch, volume, pace, intonation, pronunciation, enunciation, pause, etc. That when we are speaking face-to-face, those sounds are supported by facial expressions, eye contact (or its absence), gestures which can be with the hands, arms, feet, shoulders, head, and posture. That research on how much of face-to-face communication is non-verbal (not words) consistently indicates that more than 60% is *how* we speak and not *what* we say. In fact, the most frequently cited study indicates that 93% of face-to-face communication is non-verbal.

In an argument with a family member, the other person may have said to you: “it’s not what you said; it’s how you said it.” The way you say it matters.

In fact, watching the short film Skwerl, which was created to illustrate what English sounds like to non-native speakers, you can follow the conversation perfectly even though it makes no sense at all. You can see and hear more of the “content” and the words simply don’t matter.

Whether the 93% statistic is true or not, we do know that *how* something is said matters. This is called tone. Tone is the summary interpretation of the words said. We hear them, see them, read them, and judge the speaker’s emotional state based on all the evidence. Take a sentence like “I love that.” You can say it genuinely or sarcastically, just using your voice in a different way.

And it’s not specific to spoken language. How you say things in writing matters, too. While writing doesn’t have a voice shaping it, the way the words and phrases get put together affects the way the other person hears them. Familiar, overused phrases will come with a predetermined tone. For example, “Per my last email” cannot be read without hearing a passive-aggressive undertone. No one needs to say it for you to hear the frustration because we only use this phrase when frustrated.

New phrases don’t have the same set tone: “In my response last Friday” doesn’t sound quite as rude.

Compare “Thanks for the help” with “Thanks for helping me get that project done.” Which one sounds more genuine? Hopefully the second one.

Because *how* we say things matters. Professionals who use writing to do their jobs need to know what to write to sound confident, caring, and credible, and imagining how what you say might sound to the person reading your message is one strategy to establish yourself as a credible professional.

If you want to learn the phrases to avoid in your writing and techniques for crafting strong written messages, consider taking our Business Writing Basics course to get started!

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