Communication

Poets use words (and silence) to change things. They care about form and function and most of all, about making an impact on those that they connect with. Every word counts. Every breath as well.

In a world filled with empty noise, the most important slots are reserved for the poets we seek to listen to, and the poet we seek to become.

When we care, it’s amazing how much we can get done. One way to choose to care is to be clear about your priorities, which means being clear in your language.

I like hammering sentences, constantly changing the expression and order of words. I go through the hard process and write long novels, and when the book comes out, I never regret it. I never look back through my released titles. I don’t think I could improve on them if I were to rewrite them, because I know I did my best.

What a good editor brings to a piece of writing is an objective eye that the writer has long since lost, and there is no end of ways in which an editor can improve a manuscript: pruning, shaping, clarifying, tidying a hundred inconsistencies of tense and pronoun and location and tone, noticing all the sentences that could be read in two different ways, dividing awkward long sentences into short ones, putting the writer back on the main road if he has strayed down a side path, building bridges where the writer has lost the reader by not paying attention to his transitions, questioning matters of judgment and taste. An editor’s hand must also be invisible. Whatever he adds in his own words shouldn’t sound like his own words; they should sound like the writer’s words.

Besides wanting to write as well as possible, I wanted to write as entertaining as possible. To succeed you must make your piece jump out of a newspaper or a magazine by being more diverting than everyone else’s piece. You must find some way to elevate your act of writing into an entertainment. Usually this means giving the reader an enjoyable surprise. Any number of devices will do the job: humor, anecdote, paradox, an unexpected quotation, a powerful act, an outlandish detail, a circuitous approach, an elegant arrangement of words. These seeming amusements in fact become your “style.” When we say we like the style of certain writers, what we mean is that we like their personality as they express it on paper. Given a choice between two traveling companions - and a writer is someone who asks us to travel with him - we usually choose the one who think will make an effort to brighten the trip.

If you would like to write better than everybody else, you have to want to write better than everybody else. You must take an obsessive pride in the smallest details of your craft. And you must be willing to defend what you’ve written against the various middlemen - editors, agents and publishers - whose sights may be different from yours, whose standards not as high. Too many writers are browbeaten into settling for less than their best.

Control is vital to humor. Don’t try to use comical names like Throttlebottom. Don’t make the same kind of joke two or three times - readers will enjoy themselves more if you make it only once. Trust the sophistication of readers who do know what you’re doing, and don’t try to worry about the rest.

I recited my four articles of faith: clarity, simplicity, brevity and humanity. I explained about using active verbs and avoiding “concept nouns.” I told them not to use the special vocabulary of education as a crutch; almost any subject can be made accessible in good English.

Writing is not a special language owned by the English teacher. Writing is thinking on paper. Anyone who thinks clearly can write clearly, about anything at all. Science, demystified, is just another nonfiction subject. Writing, demystified, is just another way for scientists to transmit what they know.

It’s natural for all of us when we have gone to a certain place to feel that we are the first people who ever went there or thought such sensitive thoughts about it. Fair enough: it’s what keeps us going and validates our experience. Who can visit Egypt and not be moved by the size and antiquity of the pyramids? But that ground is already covered by multitude of people. As a writer you must keep a tight reign on your subjective self - the traveler touched by new sights and sounds and smells - and keep an objective eye on the reader. The article that records everything you did on your trip will fascinate you because it was your trip. Will it fascinate the reader? It won’t. The detail must be significant.

Get people talking. Learn to ask questions that elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives. Nothing so animates writing as someone telling what he thinks or what he does - in his own words.

His own words will always be better than your words, even if you are the most elegant stylish in the land. They carry the inflection of his speaking voice and the idiosyncrasies of how he puts a sentence together. They contain the regionalisms of his conversation and the lingo of his trade. They convey their enthusiasms. This is a person talking to the reader directly, not through the filter of a writer. As soon as a writer steps in, everyone else’s experience becomes secondhand.

Readers can do their own marveling. They will also enjoy being allowed to think for themselves. The readers plays a major role in the act of writing and must be given room to play it. Don’t annoy your readers by over-explaining - by telling them something they already know or can figure out. Try not to use words like “surprisingly,” “predictably” and “of course,” which put a value on a fact before the reader encounters the fact. Trust your material.

The longer I work at the craft of writing, the more I realize that there’s nothing more interesting than the truth. What people do - and what people say - continues to take me by surprise with its wonderfulness, or its quirkiness, or its drama, or its humor, or its pain. Who could invent all the astonishing things that really happen? I increasingly find myself saying to writers and students, “Trust your material.” It seems to be hard advice to follow.

Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it’s where the game is won or lost. That idea is hard to accept. We all have an emotional equity in our first draft; we can’t believe that it wasn’t born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 percent that it wasn’t. Most writers don’t initially say what they want to say, or say it as well as they could. The newly hatched sentence almost always has something wrong with it. It’s not clear. It’s not logical. It’s verbose. It’s klunky. It’s pretentious. It’s boring. It’s full of clutter. It’s full of cliches. It lacks rhythm. It can be read in several different ways. It doesn’t lead out of the previous sentence. It doesn’t… The point is that clear writing is the result of a lot of tinkering.

Credibility is just as fragile for a writer as for a President. Don’t inflate an incident to make it more outlandish than it actually was. If the reader catches you in just one bogus statement that you are trying to pass off as true, everything you write thereafter will be suspect. It’s too great a risk, and not work taking.

Surprisingly often a difficult problem in a sentence can be solved by simply getting rid of it. Unfortunately, this solution is usually the last one that occurs to writers in a jam. First they will put the troublesome phrase through all kinds of exertions - moving nit to some other part of the sentence, trying to rephrase it, adding new words to clarify the thought or to oil whatever that stuck. These efforts only make the situation worse, and the writer is left to conclude that there is no solution to the problem - not a comforting thought. When you find yourself at such impasse, look at the troublesome element and ask, “Do I need it at all?” Probably you don’t. It was trying to do an unnecessary job all along - that’s why it was giving you so much grief. Remove it and watch the afflicted sentence spring to life and breathe normally. It’s the quickest cure and often the best.

Keep your paragraphs short. Writing is visual - it catches the eye before it has a chance to catch the brain. Short paragraphs put air around what you write and make it look inviting, whereas a long chunk of type can discourage a reader from even starting to read.

Style is tied to the psyche, and writing has deep psychological roots. The reason we express ourselves as we do, or fail to express ourselves because of “writer’s block,” are partly buried in the subconscious mind.

Writers are obviously at the most natural when they write in the first person. Writing is an intimate transaction between two people, conducted on paper, and it will go well to the extent that it retains its humanity. Therefore I urge people to write in the first person: to use “I” and “me” and “we” and “us.”

Few people realize how badly they write. Nobody has shown them how much excess or murkiness has crept into their style and how it obstructs what they are trying to say. If you give me an eight-page article and I tell you to cut it to four pages, you’ll howl and say it can’t be done. Then you’ll go home and do it, and it will be much better. After that comes the hard part: cutting it to three.

The point is that you have to strip your writing down before you can build it back up. You must know what the essential tools are and what job they were designed to do. Extending the metaphor of carpentry, it’s first necessary to be able to saw wood neatly and to drive nails. Later you can bevel the edges or add elegant finials, if that’s your taste. But you can never forget that you are practicing a craft that’s based on certain principles. If the nails are weak, your house will collapse. If your verbs are weak and your syntax is rickety, your sentences will fall apart.

But you will be impatient to find a “style” - to embellish the plain words so that readers will recognize you as someone special. You will reach for gaudy similes and tinseled adjectives, as if “style” were something you could buy at the style store and drape onto your words in bright decorator colors. There is no style store, style is organic to the person doing the writing, as much a part of him as his hair, or, if he is bald, his lack of it.

This is the problem of writers who set out deliberately to garnish their prose. You lose whatever it is that makes you unique. The reader will notice if you are putting on airs. Readers want the person who is talking to them to sound genuine. Therefore a fundamental rule is: be yourself.

No rule, however, is harder to follow. It requires writers to do two things that by the metabolism are impossible. They must relax, and the must have confidence.

Verbal camouflage reached new heights during General Alexander Haig’s tenure as President Reagan’s secretary of state. Before Haig nobody had thought of saying “at this juncture of maturization” to mean “now.” He told the American people that terrorism could be fought with “meaningful sanctionary teeth” and that intermediate nuclear missiles were “at the vortex of cruciality.” As for any worries that the public might habor, his message was “leave it to Al,” though what he actually said was: “We must push this to a lower decibel of public fixation. I don’t think there’s much of a learning curve to be achieved in this area of content.”

You can develop the same eye. Look for the clutter in your writing and prune it ruthlessly. Be grateful for everything you can throw away. Reexamine each sentence you put on paper. Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy? Is anything pompous or pretentious or faddish? Are you hanging on to something useless because you think it’s beautiful?

Simplify, simplify.

How can the rest of us achieve such enviable freedom from clutter? The answer is to clear our heads of clutter. Clear thinking becomes clear writing; one can’t exist without the other. it’s impossible for a muddy thinker to write good English. He may get away with it for a paragraph or two, but soon the reader will be lost, and there’s no sin so grave, for the reader will not easily be lured back.

Who is this elusive creature, the reader? The reader is someone with an attention span of about 30 seconds - a person assailed by many forces competing for attention.

It won’t do it to say that the reader is too dumb or too lazy to keep pace with the train of thoughts. If the reader is lost, it’s usually because the writer hasn’t been careful enough.

Faced with such obstacles, readers are at first tenacious. They blame themselves - they obviously missed something, and they go back over the mystifying sentence, or over the whole paragraph, piercing it out like an ancient rune, making guesses and moving on. But they won’t do it for long. The writer is making them work too hard, and they will look for one who is better at the craft.

Writers must therefore constantly ask: what am I trying to say? Surprisingly often they don’t know. Then they must look at what they have written and ask: have I said it? Is it clear to someone encountering the subject for the first time? If it’s not, some fuzz has worked its way into the machinery. The clear writer is someone clearheaded enough to see this stuff what it is: fuzz.

Writing is hard work. A clear sentence is no accident. Very few sentences come out right the first time, or even the third time. Remember this in moments of despair.

There are three dimensions of public diplomacy:

Daily communications, which involves explaining the context of domestic and foreign policy decisions.
Strategic communication, in which a set of simple themes is developed, much like what occurs in a political or advertising campaign.
Development of lasting relationships with key individuals over many years through scholarships, exchanges, training, seminars, conferences, and access to media channels.

If America is like no other empire in history, then in what sense is it an empire? The use of the term may point up some useful analogies, but it may also mislead us and others by obscuring important differences.

The most effective communication often occurs not by means of distant broadcasts but in face-to-face contacts – “the last three feet.”

Each of these passages has faults of its own, but quite apart from avoidable ugliness, two qualities are common to all of them. The first is the staleness of imagery; the other is lack of precision. The writer either has a meaning and cannot express it, or he inadvertently says something else, or he is almost indifferent as to whether his words mean anything or not. This mixture of vagueness and sheer incompetence is the most marked characteristic of modern English prose, and especially of any kind of political writing. As soon as certain topics are raised, the concrete melts into the abstract and no one seems able to think of turns of speech that are not hackneyed: prose consists less and less of words chosen for the sake of their meaning, and more and more of phrases tacked together like the sections of a prefabricated henhouse.

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions:

What am I trying to say?
What words will express it?
What image or idiom will make it clearer?
Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

And he will probably ask himself two more:

Could I put it more shortly?
Have I said anything that is avoidably ugly?

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for year without trail, or shot in the back or sent to die in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements.

The inflated style itself is a kind of euphemism. A mass of Latin words falls upon the facts like soft snow, blurring the outline and covering up all the details. The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.

What is above all needed is to let meaning choose the word, and not the other way around. In prose, the worst thing one can do with words is surrender to them. When you think of a concrete object, you think wordlessly, and then, if you want to describe the thing you have been visualizing you probably hunt about until you find the exact words that seem to fit it. When you think of something abstract you are more inclined to use words from the start, and unless you make a conscious effort to prevent it, the existing dialect will come rushing in and do the job for you, at the expense of blurring or even changing your meaning. Probably it is better to put off using words as long as possible and get one’s meaning as clear as one can through pictures and sensations.

A drawing is said to “read well” when its meaning is clear. Thus, a fashion sketch reads well when it tells the dressmaker everything, except the measurements, that she needs to know in order to make the garment.

Reading a drawing is easier than making one. You can read drawings that you cannot make, but you cannot make a drawing unless you could read it if it were made by someone else. For this reason, learning to make drawings begin by learning to read them.

The fact that two-thirds of the space in this book is taken up by the text and captions demonstrates that, even in the field of communication, most drawings need to be supplemented by words. Again, although drawing is an extremely handy method of making certain computations, this does not alter the basic truth that the great majority of computations can be carried out much more easily and accurately by mathematics.

Perhaps the chief virtue of drawing is that it is most useful in the very places where language and mathematics fall short.

Unnecessary accuracy is a waste of effort; unnecessary carelessness can defeat the purpose of a drawing. I have drawn many notes which were perfectly clear to me at the time, but which conveyed no meaning at all when I tried to consult them several months later.

Omitting the useless is as important as including the essential. Aristotle started a fundamental truth when he said that everything which does not add will detract.

Construction is based on two principles: (1) If we con fix the proportions of a drawing, we usually find that the hardest part of the work is done. (2) Drawing an approximate line helps us to visualize the correct one.

Diagrams are easier to draw than pictures and often more effective.

You do not need to find improvements in order to keep your drawing fresh: the important thing is to make an honest search for them. Woodenness in a drawing is not a sign of a mechanical technique. It is a reflection of a wooden mind.

The eye cannot compare areas or volumes accurately. Pictorial charts should be based on heights or on lengths. If they show either areas or volumes, they are apt to mislead those who try to read them.

The datagram catches the eye and invites inspection, whereas few people will study a table if they can avoid it. More important still, the clarity of a datagram brings out many facts which a numerical table conceals. This is so true that most scientists and economists regard datagrams as essential tools for thought.

Beware of glyphs that may bias the observer. Using money bags for “Investors,” hammers for “Factory Workers,” and sickles for “Farmers” may lead some observers to regard investors as rich and greedy and cause others to think of factory workers and farmers as tools of Communism.

If you understand the nature of the data, you should have no difficulty in selecting the appropriate type of datagram; if you do not understand the nature of the data, you have no business drawing any datagram at all.

Tricks in rendering are not substitutes for a knowledge of structure. On the contrary, rendering techniques seldom work unless the structure is drawn correctly. Even this is not enough. You cannot get the structure right by tracing, but you cannot render it effectively without understanding the nature of the structure and keeping this clearly in mind while you draw.

Language is the dress of though.

We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages.

But language does not only have this restrictive influence on thought: language also conditions our thinking in a positive and constructive way. In discussing a little earlier in this chapter how language released emotion, it was pointed out that a person might have a pent-up feeling if he could not find the words to describe an experience. This is very largely because we feel that we have not thoroughly apprehended something if we are unable to put it into words.

Not all of us depend to the same extent on words when we are thinking to ourselves, but it is certain that, in general, thinking and decision-making are vastly supported and facilitated by language, even though we may be using the language silently.

We become aware that there is such a thing as linguistic etiquette and linguistic tact. There are ‘right’ things to say and write, just as there are ‘right’ things to wear.

This is what is meant by saying that knowing the meaning of a word is knowing how to use it, and it must lead us to take warning in one important respect. Vocabulary is the ‘open end’ of language: we spend our lives enlarging our knowledge of words. The more we can do to enlarge that knowledge, the more we can attain the satisfaction of knowing precisely what we are enjoying and being able to share that knowledge with those around us. But words are to be thought of rather as tools than as medals and ornaments. We would think a man ridiculous who bought an electric typewriter only for show and kept it on display in his drawing-room. Enlarged vocabulary is equally a ridiculous acquisition without the corresponding knowledge of how the words we have learnt are in fact used and of where they serve a useful purpose.

Things are separable in words which are inseparable in nature because words are counters and classifiers which can be arranged in any order. The word “being” is formally separate from the word “nothing,” as “pleasure” from “pain.” But in nature being and nothing, or solid and space, constitute a relationship as inseparable as back and front. In the same way, the formally static character of our words for feelings conceal the fact (or better, the event) that our feelings are directions rather than states, and that in the realm of direction there is no North without South.

It is commonly felt that the mind can think only of one thing at a time, and language, in so far as it is the main instrument of thought, confirms this impression by being a linear series of signs read or sounded one at a time. The sense of this common feeling is presumably that conscious thought is focused attention, and that such concentration of our awareness is difficult or impossible when the field of attention is too complex. Attention therefore requires selection. The field of awareness must be divided into relatively simple unities or wholes, so structured that their parts can be taken in at one glance.

Our feelings (anger, shame, delight) appear almost instantly, and, left alone, they don’t last very long.

But if we invent a narrative around an event or a person, we can keep the feeling going for a very long time.

Selecting names for variables, methods, and other entities is one of the most underrated aspects of software design. Good names are a form of documentation: they make code easier to understand. They reduce the need for other documentation and make it easier to detect errors. Name choice is an example of the principle that complexity is incremental. Choosing a mediocre name for a particular variable, as opposed to the best possible name, probably won’t have much impact on the overall complexity of a system. However, software systems have thousands of variables; choosing good names for all of these will have a significant impact on complexity and manageability.

If it’s hard to find a simple name for a variable or method that creates a clear image of the underlying object, that’s a hint that the underlying object may not have a clean design.

But often they lack the ability to communicate in a constructive way, which is generally what makes them come across as disrespectful. It’s not what is being said, it’s how they are saying it.

Conscious of his own skill, he composed a letter later entitled The Art of Poetry, telling young scribblers the rule for good writing: clarity, directness, mingling the useful with the pleasant. Art assumes feeling as well in the artist as in the recipient: “If you wish me to weep, you must first grieve yourself.” But art is not feeling alone; it is feeling conveyed in disciplined form — “emotion remembered in tranquility”; here is the challenge of the classic to the romantic style.

To achieve form, study the Greeks day and night. Avoid words that are new, obsolete, or sesquipedalian — “foot-and-a-half words.” If your product survives all this, hide it away for eight years. If then it still pleases you, publish it, but remember that it may shame your maturity. If you write drama, obey the three unities — of action, time, and place. Study life and philosophy, for without study and understanding, a perfect style is an empty vessel, to fragile for our use.

Listening affects people.

When a prospect is listened to, he experience specific physiological changes. His heart rate goes up. His blood pressure goes up. His galvanic skin response increases. Most importantly, when a person is intensely listened to, his self-esteem goes up. He feels more valued. He likes himself more, and as a result, he likes the person who is listening to him so intently.

Listening is the most powerful of all techniques in selling. All of the highest-paid sales professionals are described as “very good listeners.” They “seek first to understand, then to be understood.” They concentrate al of their attention on understanding the thoughts, feelings, and needs of the customer before they make any attempt to sell.

There are three benefits to pausing. First, when you pause, you convey to the prospect that you are carefully considering what he just said. This tells him that you value him and his words. What he has said is too important for you to respond too quickly. As a result, you raise his self-esteem and self-respect. You make him feel better about himself, and by extension, better about you.

The second benefit is that it allows you to hear the prospect at a deeper level of mind. It’s almost as though words soak into your mind as water soaks into the soil. When you allow silence after the prospect’s words, you actually understand what he or she really meant, much more than you would if you replied immediately.

The third benefit is that you avoid the risk of interrupting the prospect if he is just reorganizing his thoughts and preparing to begin speaking again.

To name something — to use the word for the thing — is essentially to point to it, to specify it against everything else, to isolate it for use individually and socially.

Scarlett is now learning to talk — a more sophisticated form of pointing (and of exploration). Every word is a pointer, as well as a simplification or generalization. To name something is not only to make it shine forth against the infinite background of potentially nameable things, but to group or categorize it, simultaneously, with many other phenomena of its broad utility or significance.

Everyone requires a story to structure their perceptions and actions in what would otherwise be the overwhelming chaos of being. Every story requires a starting place that is not good enough and an ending place that is better. Nothing can be judged in the absence of that end place, that higher value. Without it, everything sinks into meaninglessness and boredom or degenerates and spirals into terror, anxiety, and pain.

Kinh nghiệm cho thấy hầu hết những nhà văn hàng đầu không ưa đăng đàn bàn chuyện văn chương. Chẳng bao giờ nghe các nhà văn ấy họ lý sự hay là lên lớp ai về quan niệm này, lý thuyết nọ. Nhà tiểu thuyết Nguyễn Minh Châu thậm chí còn quan niệm rằng người ta viết văn không theo và không xuất phát từ một lý thuyết với chủ nghĩa nào cả, viết là viết, tự nó, vậy thôi. Một sự không cưỡng được, gần như chẳng dừng được mà người ta viết.

Nguyễn Minh Châu không chỉ sợ tật hay nói, hay xướng ngôn, ông còn kỵ cả cái sự cố công ngẫm nghĩ, vày vò đầu óc để ra chữ ra nghĩa. Ông không ưa những đề cương truyện ngắn và tiểu thuyết của học trò trường Nguyễn Du, đề cương càng tỉ mỉ và chi tiết thì càng đáng chê. Văn học chứ có phải toán học đâu, ông bảo vậy, càng không phải là kế hoạch sản xuất hay là phương án tác chiến, để mà tính toán, dự trù, để mà bày binh bố trận. Ông cho rằng người ta không thể nghĩ ra văn, dù là nghiền ngẫm nghĩ ngợi đến đâu cũng không thể, người ta chỉ có thể viết khi “văn” của người ta đã đến độ buộc người ta không thể không viết. Và cái gọi là “văn” ấy là tất cả những gì nhà văn đã biết, đã thấu.

Bits deliver information, but costliness carries meaning.

Effective communication will always require some degree of irrationality in its creation because if it’s perfectly rational it becomes, like water, entirely lacking in flavor. This explains why working with an advertising agency can be frustrating: it is difficult to produce good advertising, but good advertising is only good because it is difficult to produce. The potency and meaningfulness of communication is in direct proportion to the costliness of its creation — the amount of pain, effort, talent consumed in its creation and distribution. This may be inefficient — but it’s what makes it work.

Quite simply, all powerful messages must contain an element of absurdity, illogicality, costliness, disproportion, inefficiency, scarcity, difficulty or extravagance — because rational behavior and talk, for all their strengths, convey no meaning.

Why is there a reluctance to accept that life is not just a narrow pursuit of greater efficiency and that there is room for opulence and display as well? Yes, costly signaling can lead to economic efficiency, but at the same time this inefficiency establishes valuable social qualities such as trustworthiness and commitment — politeness and good manners are costly signaling in a face-to-face form. Why are people happy with the idea that nature has an accounting function, but much less comfortable with the idea that it also has a marketing function? Should we despise flowers because they are less efficient than grasses? Even Darwin’s great contemporary and collaborator Wallace hated the idea of sexual selection; for some reason, it sits in the category of ideas that most people — and especially intellectuals — simply do not want to believe.

If you take any two languages at random, you may find that the two are sometimes immensely different, containing concepts unique to one or the other.

The job of a designer is hence that of a translator. To play with the source material of objective reality in order to create the right perceptual and emotional outcome.

Selling your company to the media is a necessary part of selling it to everyone else. You should never assume that people will admire your company without a PR strategy. Even if your particular product doesn’t need media exposure to acquire customers because you have a viral distribution strategy, the press can help attract investors and employees.

Verbal expression is the mirror of the mind. Clear thoughts become clear statements, whereas ambiguous ideas transform into vacant ramblings. The trouble is that, in many cases, we lack very lucid thoughts. The world is complicated, and it takes a great deal of mental effort to understand even one facet of the whole. Until you experience such an epiphany, it’s better to heed Mark Twain: “If you have nothing to say, say nothing.” Simplicity is the zenith of a long, arduous journey, not the starting point.

The biggest issue on software teams is making sure everyone understands what everyone else is doing.

Before you use a method in a legacy system, check to see if there are tests for it. If there aren’t, write them. When you do this consistently, you use tests as a medium of communication.

A mediocre name will stay forever until a responsible developer takes courage and refactoring it.

Faced with incomplete knowledge, put bad names. Bad names ask for refactor.

Marketing is the act of telling stories about the things we make — stories that sell and stories that spread.

People don’t believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves.

One way to choose to care is to be clear about your priorities, which means being clear in your language.

On the other hand, forgotten stories have little power. What happens to us matters a great deal, but even more powerful are the stories we repeat about what happened.

Throat clearing isn’t necessary. Say all that stuff in your head, but, we’d really like to hear the best part first.

Narrating our lives, the little play-by-play we can’t help carrying around, that’s a survival mechanism. But it also hot-wires our feelings, changes our posture, limit our possibilities. What does this human feel right now? What opportunities to make a connection, to grow, to impact exist that we’ve ignored because of the story we are telling ourselves about them? The narrative is useful as long as it’s useful, helping you solve problems and move forward. But when it reinforces bad habits or make things smaller, we can drop it and merely be present, right here, right now.

More than ever, we express ourselves with what we buy and how we use what we buy. Extensions of our personality, totems of ourselves, reminders of who we are or would like to be.

Great marketers don’t make stuff. They make meaning.

All marketers tell a story. The “this is the best price and value” story is just one of those available, and in fact, it’s rarely the most effective for the audience you may be trying to reach.

The lack of a term doesn’t mean you don’t understand the concept; it simply means that the category isn’t reflected in our language. This could be because a need for it hasn’t been so pressing that a word needed to be coined.

To do so, we need to know where we have been, where we currently are, and in what direction we are headed. We reduce that account to its causal structure: we need to know what happened and why, and we need to know it as simply and practically as possible.

It is for such reasons we are so captivated by people who can tell a story — who can share their experiences concisely and precisely, and who get to the point. That point — the moral of the story — is what they learned about who and where they were or are, and where they are going and why.

It is not as if we are born with an instinct for the periodic table of the elements. No. We only managed to get that straight a few hundred years ago, and it took a lot of conscious time and effort to formulate. It is not that interesting, intrinsically, because there is no story associated with it. It is an accurate and useful representation of the objective reality of what is, beyond the shadow of a doubt, but it is a struggle to master perception of that abstracted sort.

When you write, you can’t. The moving eye does not go back. If it has to go back, that means you’ve written poorly.
Now, if you are not a good writer and a good communicator, which you are, that is a huge plus for a leader, but if you are not, it’s a huge handicap for a leader.
Well, yes, because, I mean, to be a leader, you must be able to communicate your feelings and move the other fellow. It’s not just ideas, you know.
And you don’t have to be a genius. You may be, but you don’t have to be. Ronald Reagan was not a genius.
But you must move the other fellow’s position.

Well, my purpose in writing my books is to get the average O level graduates to read it and understand it. So, my wife was my scrubber.

You know, I’m an orator, or at least I try to be. So, I have oratorical flourishes when I speak. You must have flourishes because then you capture people’s attention and you expand on it; then you’re able to go back and repeat it, but not in words. So, she tells me, look — and she’s a draftsman; as a lawyer, she did all the drafting of agreements, contracts, conveyances and so on; so she uses words precisely — she says, why do you want to write it like this? The O level boy will not understand this. Why not use a simple word instead of this polysyllable word? So, I said, okay, I agree with you and I think in the course of the 2, 3 years that she corrected my drafts, after the first year, I began to write simple, clear, crisp, I mean, no convoluted, sentences.

But also, you have something to say. Thus you don’t need to hide it behind a smokescreen of language.

What I want to discuss is the importance of simple, clear, written English. This is not simple… Arthur Koestler rightly pointed out that if Hitler’s speeches had been written, not spoken, the Germans would never have gone to war… When you send me or send your minister a minute or a memo, or a draft that has to be published like the president’s address, do not try to impress by big words. Impress by the clarity of your ideas… I speak as a practitioner. If I had not been able to reduce complex ideas into simple words and project them vividly for mass understanding, I would not be here today.

As reporters, our craft is writing. We are wordsmiths. To keep in top form, a writer has to exercise his vocabulary and command of language in the same way a single handicapper in golf hits 200 balls on the practice range every day. Dr. Goh taught me how to exercise my vocabulary. He told me to pick a word, any word, and write out its five synonyms. Turn it over, and write out its five antonyms. Start with hot and cold.

Many of our examples suggest that clarity and excellent in thinking is very much like clarity and excellence in the display of data. When principle of design replicate principles of thought, the act of arranging information becomes an act of insight.

If your message is to be printed, use high-quality paper to maximize the contrast between characters and their background. If you use color, you are more likely to be believed if your text is printed in bright blue or red than in middling shades of green, yellow, or pale blue.

If you care about being thought credible and intelligent, do not use complex language where simple language will do. Couching familiar ideas in pretentious language is taken as a sign of poor intelligence and low credibility.

In addition to making your message simple, try to make it memorable. Put your ideas in verse if you can; they will be more likely to be taken as truth.

More direct cultures tend to use what linguists call upgraders, words preceding or following negative feedback that make it feel stronger, such as “absolutely,” “totally,” or “strongly”: “This is absolutely inappropriate” or “This is totally unprofessional.” In contrast, more indirect cultures use more downgraders, when giving negative feedback. These are words that soften the criticism, such as “kind of,” “sort of,” “a little,” “a bit,” “maybe,” and “slightly.” Another type of downgrader is a deliberate understatement, such as, “We are not quite there yet,” when you really mean, “We are nowhere near our goal.”

This sentence has five words. Here are five more words. Five-word sentences are fine. But several together become monotonous. Listen to what is happening. The writing is getting boring. The sound of it drones. It’s like a stuck record. The ear demands some variety. Now listen. I vary the sentence length, and I create music. Music. The writing sings. It has a pleasant rhythm, a lilt, a harmony. I use short sentences. And I use sentences of medium length. And sometimes, when I am certain the reader is rested, I will engage him with a sentence of considerable length, a sentence that burns with energy and builds with all the impetus of a crescendo, the roll of the drums, the crash of the cymbals - sound that say listen to this, this is important.

You don’t have to be mean when you have a real point to make. In fact, you don’t want to. If you have something real to say, being mean just gets in the way.

Communication is simply an outward manifestation of our thoughts, our intentions, and our conclusions about the people around us. “Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks.”

Calm yourself before communicating to another. When you are put off, the first 5 minutes are usually the most volatile. If you can train yourself to stuff the knee-jerk response, you will save yourself hours of backpedaling, back-scratching, and brown-nosing down the road.

Of all the technical debt you can incur, the worst in my experience is bad names — for database columns, variables, functions, etc. Fix those immediately before they metastasize all over your code and become extremely painful to fix later, and they always do.

It’s not what you say, it’s what they hear. The biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

Bork verbally sparred with senators at his hearing, largely talking himself out of the job.

We experience our day-to-day lives in story mode. The brain creates a world for us to live in and populates it with allies and villains. It turns the chaos and bleakness of reality into a simple, hopeful tale, and at the center it places its star — wonderful, precious me — who it sets on a series of goals that become the plots for our lives. Story is what brain does. It is a story processor, not a logic processor.

Ví dụ điển hình cho kiểu giao tiếp này là văn hoá Mỹ, nơi có nhiều người nhập cư với nguồn gốc và ngôn ngữ khác nhau. Chính vì thế, họ hầu như không có điểm chung. Muốn truyền đạt thông điệp hiệu quả, họ hiểu rằng mọi thứ cần ngắn gọn và rõ ràng nhất có thể. Chính vì thế, lâu dần họ hình thành kiểu nói chuyện low-context.

When participants in one study read the words “he had a rough day,” their neural regions involved in feeling textures became more activated, compared with those who read “he had a bad day.” Those who read “she shouldered the burden” had neural regions associated with bodily movement activated more than when they read “she carried the burden.”

The issue isn’t simply that scenes without cause and effect tend to be boring. Plots that play too loose with cause and effect risk becoming confusing, because they’re not speaking in the brain’s language.

Actually, the breakdown is between the person and himself. If you’re not able to communicate successfully between yourself and yourself, how are you supposed to make it with the strangers outside?

However, even allowing for the fact that this is an early draft, I think you must bear in mind that you do have a rather relentless and unbending style. To justify itself to the reader, it requires the greatest precision in the use of words.

Confusion of thought and feeling leads to confusion of speech.

The memo should clearly but briefly state the following:

The problem
The agreed-upon or determined solution
The tasks involved in implementing the solution
Who is responsible for each task
The timeline for completing the tasks
The method for measuring the solution’s success

Regular communication — daily or at least weekly — is the most effective way to both monitor and shape employee performance. It remains your most effective tool as a manager. Don’t save things, good or bad, for a formal evaluation meeting. Nothing you or the employee says in a formal meeting should come as a surprise to either one of you.

In most aspects of life, you need to say something about 20 times before it truly starts to sink in. Say it a few times, people are too busy to even notice. A few more times, they start to become aware of a vague buzzing in their ear. By the time you’ve repeated it 15 to 20 times you may be completely sick of it, but that’s about the time people are starting to get it. So as a leader you want to habitually overcommunicate. “Repetition doesn’t spoil the prayer.”

His response to a question about his success as a writer: “I leave out the parts that people skip.”

Now, everywhere you go, the leaders have so many staffers. There are so many papers which need to be submitted, and then summarized for the management. Why can’t the leader read the paper himself? The paper should not be long. Why is there a need to write a long damn paper? Who’s going to read it? Dr. Goh used to demand that a paper is no longer than 1 page and it must be written in simple English. He always said: short and sharp. If you cannot tell me in 1 page or in 5 minutes, it means you have no clarity of thought. Leaders should demand clarity instead of this paper-generating culture.

You would not believe how difficult it is to be simple and clear. People are afraid that they may be seen as a simpleton. In reality, just the opposite is true.

And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed.

Voice is special because of the uniqueness of the human life behind it, which I realize sounds a bit airy-fairy, but is very true once you start digging into what works and what doesn’t. When you read something and wonder why it’s so engaging when it’s not that much different than other very similar pieces, that’s often what’s at work.

Learn the lesson: Once the words are out, you cannot take them back. Keep them under control. Be particular careful with sarcasm: The momentary satisfaction you gain with your biting words will be outweighed by the price you pay.

Search for the correct words. Organize those words into the correct sentences, and those sentences into the correct paragraphs.

Courageous and truthful words will render your reality simple, pristine, well-defined and habitable.

Using words to plead your case is risky business: Words are dangerous instruments, and often go astray. The words people use to persuade us virtually invite us to reflect on them with words of our own; we mull them over, and often end up believing the opposite of what they say.

Understand: Words put you on the defensive. If you have to explain yourself your power is already in question. The image, on the other hand, imposes itself as a given. It discourages questions, create forceful associations, resists unintended interpretations, communicates instantly, and forges bonds that transcend social differences. Words stir up arguments and divisions; images bring people together.

A lie told once remains a lie, but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.

The most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly - it must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.

Semantics isn’t simply about words; it’s about the context in which those words are used. It’s about understanding.

He once remarked that 99% of all conflicts are about the misunderstanding of words used in different contexts. His success, therefore, came from trying diligently to understand what someone meant.

Well, no. The point is this: difficult conversations are almost never about getting the facts right. They are about conflicting perceptions, interpretations, and values. They are not about what a contract states, they are about what a contract means. They are not about which child-rearing books is most popular, they are about which child-rearing book we should follow.

They are not about what is true, they are about what is important.

The problem with this reasoning is that it fails to take account of one simple fact: difficult conversations do not just involve feelings, they are at their very core about feelings. Feelings are not some noisy byproduct of engaging in difficult talk, they are an integral part of the conflict. Engaging in a difficult conversation without talking about feelings is like staging an opera without the music. You’ll get the plot but miss the point.

A literal focus on intentions ends up clouding the conversation. Often we say “You intended to hurt me” when what we really mean is “You don’t care enough about me.”

Unexpressed feelings can cause a third, more subtle problem. The two hardest (and most important) communication tasks are expressing feelings and listening. When people are having a hard time listening, often it is not because they don’t know how to listen well. It is, paradoxically, because they don’t know how to express themselves well. Unexpressed feelings can block the ability to listen.

Why? Because good listening requires an open and honest curiosity about the other person, and a willingness and ability to keep the spotlight on them. Buried emotions draw the spotlight back to us. It’s hard to hear someone else when we are feeling unheard, even if the reason we feel unheard is that we have chosen not to share. Our listening ability often increases remarkably once we have expressed our own strong feelings.

It is crucial to look at the actual words you are using to see whether those words really convey what you want them to. For example, the statement “You are so damn undependable!” is a judgment about the other person’s character. There is no reference in the statement to how the speaker feels. We should not be surprised if the response is “I am not undependable!”

In contrast, the statement “I feel frustrated. You didn’t send the letter out,” removes the blame and focuses on the feelings underneath. Such a formulation won’t make all of your problems disappear, but it is more likely to lead to a productive discussion.

Their wonder lies in the fact that they’re merely suggested. Like monsters in the most frightening horror stories, they feel all the more real for being the creations, not of the writer, but of our own incessant model-making imaginations.

Metaphor is far more important to human cognition than has ever been imagined. Many argue it’s the fundamental way that brains understand abstract concepts, such as love, joy, society and economy. It’s simply not possible to comprehend these ideas in any useful sense, then, without attaching them to concept that have physical properties: things that bloom and warm and stretch and shrink.

A newly invented metaphor assists thought by evoking a visual image. The use of that huge dump of worn-out metaphors which have lost all evocative power and are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.

Whenever anything appeared incomprehensible, it was either omitted or explained, in much the same way that an editor might fix a confusing story.

Turning the confusing and random into a comprehensible story is an essential function of the storytelling brain.

Cause and effect is the natural language of the brain. It’s how it understands and explains the world. Compelling stories are structured as chains of causes and effects. A secret of bestselling page-turners and blockbusting scripts is their relentless adherence to forward motion, one thing leading directly to another.

Rectification of Names: Confucius emphasized the importance of using language properly and accurately. He believed that if individuals used language correctly and referred to things by their proper names, it would promote clarity, honesty, and effective communication.

Clarity: Communication should be clear and easily understandable. Use simple and concise language, avoid jargon or technical terms that may be unfamiliar to the recipient, and ensure your message is free from ambiguity or confusion.
Purpose: Clearly define the purpose or objective of your communication. Determine what you want to achieve or convey, whether it’s providing information, persuading, seeking input, or building relationships. Aligning your message with a clear purpose helps ensure that your communication is focused and effective.
Active Listening: Communication is not just about speaking but also about listening. Practice active listening by paying attention to the speaker, understanding their perspective, and responding appropriately. Engage in active listening techniques such as maintaining eye contact, nodding, and asking relevant questions to demonstrate your attentiveness.
Feedback: Feedback is crucial for effective communication. Provide feedback to the speaker to show that you have understood their message, validate their perspective, or seek clarification. Similarly, be open to receiving feedback and actively respond to it to foster a constructive dialogue.
Nonverbal Communication: Nonverbal cues, such as facial expressions, body language, tone of voice, and gestures, play a significant role in communication. Be aware of your nonverbal signals and use them consciously to support your message. Pay attention to the nonverbal cues of others to better understand their emotions and intentions.
Empathy: Effective communication involves understanding and empathizing with others. Put yourself in the shoes of the person you are communicating with, consider their feelings and perspectives, and respond with sensitivity and compassion. Empathy helps create a supportive and conducive communication environment.
Respect and Courtesy: Treat others with respect and maintain a courteous tone in your communication. Use polite language, avoid derogatory or offensive remarks, and be mindful of cultural and social sensitivities. Respectful communication promotes a positive and productive exchange of ideas.
Timing and Relevance: Consider the timing and relevance of your communication. Choose appropriate moments to communicate, taking into account the other person’s availability and receptiveness. Ensure that your message is relevant and meaningful to the recipient, tailored to their needs and interests.
Adaptability: Communication should be adaptable to different situations and individuals. Adjust your communication style, tone, and level of formality based on the context, cultural norms, and the preferences of the people you are communicating with. Being adaptable helps build rapport and fosters effective communication.
Integrity and Authenticity: Communicate with honesty, integrity, and authenticity. Be true to yourself, speak with sincerity, and avoid misleading or deceptive communication. Building trust through genuine and ethical communication is essential for establishing strong relationships.

Greek myths usually have 3 acts, Aristotle’s “beginning, middle and end,” perhaps more usefully described as crisis, struggle, resolution. They often starred singular heroes battling terrible monsters and returning home with treasures.

Sự nghèo nàn của ngôn ngữ biểu thị sự bần cùng của tư tưởng; ít ý, ít lời; và 1 lần nữa những từ hiếm này chỉ tạo thành những mô tả rất không hoàn hảo về các đối tượng mà chúng áp cho; nghĩa của chúng vẫn còn mơ hồ và thiếu chính xác.

Hầu như không thể dịch các tác phẩm triết học hoặc khoa học của chúng ta sang tiếng An Nam hoặc tiếng Trung Hoa; 1 ý tưởng trừu tượng như vậy, 1 từ mới và chưa biết, sẽ buộc phải dùng đến lối nói vòng vo và các cụm từ làm cho văn phong trở nên nặng nề, làm tổn hại đến sự tường minh và có thể đến cả nội hàm chung của văn bản.

Sentences in their variety run from simplicity to complexity, a progress not necessarily reflected in length: a long sentence may be extremely simple in construction — indeed, must be simple if it is to convey its sense easily.

Other things being equal, a series of short sentences will convey an impression of speed, and are therefore suited to the narration of action or historical events; while longer sentences give an air of solemnity and deliberation to writing.

Life is change that yearns for stability. Story is a form of play that allows us to feel we’ve lost control without actually placing us in danger. It’s a rollercoaster, but not one made from ramps, rails and steel wheels, but from love, hope, dread, curiosity, status play, unexpected change and moral outrage. Story is thrill-ride of control.

You know, when a man is reduced to using abuse to make his point, he’s lost the argument. That’s the first thing I learnt as a lawyer; never go down to a shouting match because then you’ve lost the argument.

Bezos believes that memos encourage smarter questions and deeper thinking. Plus, because they’re self-contained (rather than requiring a person to present a deck), they are more easily distributed and consumed by a wider population within Amazon.

A final sign of a good digital nervous system is how effective your face-to-face meetings are. Good meetings are the result of good preparation. Meetings shouldn’t be used mainly to present information. It’s more efficient to use email so that people can analyze data before the meeting. Then they will be prepared to make suggestions and debate the issues at the meeting itself.

Companies that are struggling with too many unproductive meetings don’t lack energy and brains. The data they need exists somewhere in the company in some form. Digital tools would enable them to get the data immediately, from many sources, and to analyze it from any angles.

Also, drawings sometimes have a useful abstracting, idealizing quality; a generic heart is depicted, not a particular or idiosyncratic heart.

Although movement attracts attention, it also diminishes visibility.

Near the beginning of your presentation, tell the audience:

What the problem is
Why the problem is important
What the solution to the problem is

Magicians rarely perform the same trick twice in front of the same audience because they are aware that repetition helps people learn, remember, and understand. Unlike magicians, you should give your audience a second chance to get the point. And a third. Repeated variations on the same theme will often clarify and develop an idea.

Multiple images reveal repetition and change, pattern and surprise — the defining elements in the idea of information.

Multiples directly depict comparisons, the essence of statistical thinking.

Multiples enhance the dimensionality of the flatlands of paper and computer screen, giving depth to vision by arraying panels and slices of information.

Multiples create visual lists of objects and activities, nouns and verbs, helping viewers to analyze, compare, differentiate, decide.

Multiples represent and narrate sequences of motion.

Multiple amplify, intensify, and reinforce the meaning of images.

Speech alone is sometimes an altogether inefficient, low-resolution method for communicating information, a point to be considered by teachers who rely on lectures, people running committees, and newscasters. Whenever possible, give your audience words and images written down on paper, even if only to supplement spoken words.

Although a television account would look much like any other disaster story (and thus contain little information), the printed report here is eloquent and memorable because of its specific and scary detail. Also the printed page allows readers to control the order and pace of one-dimensional ordering imposed by the rush of voice with video.

Bower once explained the rationale for his sartorial standards. “If you jobs is to help a client have the courage to follow the trail indicated by the facts, you need to do everything you can to minimize the distractions and deviations the client is likely to take. If you have revolutionary ideas, they are much more likely to be listened if you do not have revolutionary dress… If you were an airline passenger, and the pilot came aboard the plane and he wore shorts and a flaming scarf, would you have the same confidence as you did when he came on with his four stripes on the shoulder? Basically, the dress code all has to do with what you want to do, when you want to build confidence and an identity.”

Why did it matter? Because unlike other professions — law, medicine — consulting was obviously built on pretense, where dress, manners, and language were meant to present some notion of capability that wasn’t there to see on a diploma.

Honoring information means above all avoiding language pollution — making the cleanest possible use we can of language. Second, it means expanding our language so we can talk about complexity.

When we present work, it’s almost always written up first. A complete idea in the form of a carefully composed multipage document. Illustrated, whenever possible. And then it’s posted to Basecamp, which lets everyone involved know there’s a complete idea waiting to be considered.

We don’t want reactions. We don’t want first impressions. We don’t want knee-jerks. We want considered feedback. Read it over. Read it twice, three times even. Sleep on it. Take your time to gather and present your thoughts - just like the person who pitched the original idea took their time to gather and present theirs. That’s how you go deep on an idea.

Passive-aggressive communication style is characterized by an indirect expression of hostility, often through procrastination, sullenness, stubbornness, or deliberate failure to accomplish requested tasks for which one is (often explicitly) responsible. Here are some common signs and behaviors associated with passive-aggressive communication:

Sarcasm and veiled comments: Making sarcastic comments or giving backhanded compliments that can be interpreted as friendly but are actually meant to belittle or insult.
Silent treatment: Ignoring or excluding others as a means of expressing displeasure or disapproval without verbalizing it.
Procrastination: Intentionally putting off important tasks as a form of resistance or expression of anger.
Stubbornness: Refusing to negotiate, compromise, or engage in an honest dialogue when it’s needed.
Non-verbal cues: Rolling eyes, avoiding eye contact, smirking, or frowning can be non-verbal indicators of passive-aggressive behavior.
Sabotage: Subtly undermining others’ efforts, often to avoid direct confrontation or as a means of revenge.
Denial: When confronted, a person with a passive-aggressive communication style often denies having negative feelings or being confrontational.

When mediating between two groups who aren’t communicating well, for example, Lindsey feigns confusion. “You say, ‘You know, maybe it’s just me, but I don’t understand. I’m sorry I’m slowing you down here with all my silly questions, but could you just explain to me one more time what that means? Just break it down for me like I’m a two-year-old.’”

The backbone of structure is clear communication. Employees need to know what they are expected to do and by when. What is more important? What is less important? What happens when tasks compete for people, time, and resources? Some people are good at establishing priorities, while others struggle. Sometimes employees have trouble prioritizing because they are unfamiliar with the department, the company, or the industry. They have no context for the work they do, so they don’t know what to tackle first. Everything becomes critical in such an environment. As a consequence what gets completed is often frustratingly trivial, and the important stuff gets left undone or is missed completely.

Beware of the familiarity trap. As soon as the words begin to sound familiar, the search for new information ends. “I’ve heard this before!” your mind says, and it turns its attention elsewhere.

An old Chinese proverb says wisdom begins with calling things by their right name.

Speak slowly, clearly, and thoughtfully.

A hallmark of charismatic individuals is that other people listen when they speak.

However, you can’t expect people to listen when you speak if you are constantly blurting out random crap and speaking faster than a radio ad.

When you talk in social settings speak clearly, slowly, and with deep vocal tonality.

Think before you speak and make sure that every word coming out of your mouth is meaningful.

If you are the type of person who only speaks when they have something important to say, people will naturally shut up and listen when you open your mouth.

He has an outsize vocabulary but he tends to downshift when making public speeches to connect with the crowd. He spent a lifetime with two top class British trained lawyers, and it is impossible not to have that legacy rub off.

What separates him from the man in the street is the precise choice of words and crystal clear thought train, products of a lucid, uncluttered mind. The speed of thought and clever turn of phrase only accentuate his quality of mind.

Command of the English’s tongue isn’t just grammar and a way with words. It is crafting your message and delivering it as intended to the mind of the recipient.

We’ve also seen strong evidence that the method and manner in which you choose to communicate has a major influence on how people feel at work. Frazzled, exhausted, and anxious? Or calm, cool, and collected? These aren’t just states of mind, they are conditions caused by the kinds of tools we use, and the kinds of behaviors those tools encourage.

Let’s call this point the ‘vocab point’ — that is, the point (per Duncan) ‘where you begin to make up your own language to describe the nuances of expertise you can see.’