How to Write Clearly in Texts and Messages
Determine your audience., Identify the purpose of your text., Begin texts with your conclusion., Avoid slang and jargon., Proofread your messages., Convey tone with emoticons where appropriate.
Step-by-Step Guide
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Step 1: Determine your audience.
Audience refers to the person or people who will be receiving your text.
With friends and family, you can be a lot more casual with your language and friendly with your expressions.
With an acquaintance or coworker, you’ll likely want to be more formal and polite., Knowing the purpose of your text will help you stay on topic and cut to the chase.
This doesn’t mean that you have to only stick to the point, but the topic of your text should make up the body of it.When writing a text, for each part of it ask yourself, “Is this really important? Does this matter for my topic?” If the answer is no to either of these questions, you can likely delete the section in question.
Texts to friends and family might sound cold if you only stick to the topic.
You might want start out with a pleasantry, like, “Long time no see,” or “How’ve you been lately?” After that, you can move on to your topic. , With longer messages, the main point of your text can sometimes get lost.
In some cases, the recipient might get distracted halfway through reading and only skim the rest.
To prevent the purpose of your text from getting lost, start with your conclusion or the reason for the message.For example, if you’re writing to set up a hang-out session, start with that and add details after, as in, “Hey John, want to hang out? I’m meeting Joe and Deborah at 4PM at the arcade.” Another example of starting with the conclusion first might look something like, “Mary can’t come camping.
She has a doctor’s appointment and a big test coming up.
She’s pretty disappointed.” , In some cases, like when talking to your peers, slang can be a helpful way of communicating your feelings and making the text sound more conversational.
However, sometimes the recipient might not understand these expressions.
When trying to be clear, leave slang and jargon out of your texts.Jargon is a fancy word for special language used in a profession or social group.
For example, online gamers often use the jargon terms: noob, gank, afk, bbl, ftw, and more. , You don’t have to crawl word by word through your text, puzzling over commas and the such.
A quick glance through your message should be enough in most cases for you to pick up on errors or unclear spots.
Correct these when you find them.If you find yourself going back and forth over whether a particular part of a text is correct, that’s usually a good sign that it could be improved, even if it’s not technically grammatically wrong. , Emoticons are a way of communicating something graphically.
These include things like emotions, activities, and more.
By adding a smiley face or a frowny face, you can add an emotional aspect to your text to better convey your feelings.
In most cases, emoticons are not considered appropriate for formal or business texts.
Some examples of emoticons follow.
Smiley faces: :-) , :) , ^_^ , :] Laughing/big grin: :-D , :
D, =D Crying smiley: :’( , T_T , :*( Irritated/angry: >:[ , >_<
>:( Listening to music: d-_-b -
Step 2: Identify the purpose of your text.
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Step 3: Begin texts with your conclusion.
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Step 4: Avoid slang and jargon.
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Step 5: Proofread your messages.
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Step 6: Convey tone with emoticons where appropriate.
Detailed Guide
Audience refers to the person or people who will be receiving your text.
With friends and family, you can be a lot more casual with your language and friendly with your expressions.
With an acquaintance or coworker, you’ll likely want to be more formal and polite., Knowing the purpose of your text will help you stay on topic and cut to the chase.
This doesn’t mean that you have to only stick to the point, but the topic of your text should make up the body of it.When writing a text, for each part of it ask yourself, “Is this really important? Does this matter for my topic?” If the answer is no to either of these questions, you can likely delete the section in question.
Texts to friends and family might sound cold if you only stick to the topic.
You might want start out with a pleasantry, like, “Long time no see,” or “How’ve you been lately?” After that, you can move on to your topic. , With longer messages, the main point of your text can sometimes get lost.
In some cases, the recipient might get distracted halfway through reading and only skim the rest.
To prevent the purpose of your text from getting lost, start with your conclusion or the reason for the message.For example, if you’re writing to set up a hang-out session, start with that and add details after, as in, “Hey John, want to hang out? I’m meeting Joe and Deborah at 4PM at the arcade.” Another example of starting with the conclusion first might look something like, “Mary can’t come camping.
She has a doctor’s appointment and a big test coming up.
She’s pretty disappointed.” , In some cases, like when talking to your peers, slang can be a helpful way of communicating your feelings and making the text sound more conversational.
However, sometimes the recipient might not understand these expressions.
When trying to be clear, leave slang and jargon out of your texts.Jargon is a fancy word for special language used in a profession or social group.
For example, online gamers often use the jargon terms: noob, gank, afk, bbl, ftw, and more. , You don’t have to crawl word by word through your text, puzzling over commas and the such.
A quick glance through your message should be enough in most cases for you to pick up on errors or unclear spots.
Correct these when you find them.If you find yourself going back and forth over whether a particular part of a text is correct, that’s usually a good sign that it could be improved, even if it’s not technically grammatically wrong. , Emoticons are a way of communicating something graphically.
These include things like emotions, activities, and more.
By adding a smiley face or a frowny face, you can add an emotional aspect to your text to better convey your feelings.
In most cases, emoticons are not considered appropriate for formal or business texts.
Some examples of emoticons follow.
Smiley faces: :-) , :) , ^_^ , :] Laughing/big grin: :-D , :
D, =D Crying smiley: :’( , T_T , :*( Irritated/angry: >:[ , >_<
>:( Listening to music: d-_-b
About the Author
Nicholas Campbell
Experienced content creator specializing in hobbies guides and tutorials.
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