It happened again.
I said, "this" and they heard "that." They were so upset that they worried about it all night.
I was lucky. They trusted me enough to tell me they were upset. Gratefully, we cleared up the matter fairly easily.
Still, imagine my chagrin! I was heart broken to learn that I had so egregiously offended someone - on accident.
As I venture into the Internet stream, I strive to practice kind words. Sometimes, I delete a comment rather than potentially be misunderstood. Often, I focus on what is true and supportive about a blog post, person or email interaction. I am not afraid to apologize as well.
When in doubt, I pick up the telephone.
Even with all this effort, miscommunication happens. In fact, did you know that words only account for 6 percent of the information translated in a conversation? 6 percent! It's not suprising that we misinterpret the tone of internet communication over half of the time. Add a 140 character limit in plurk, twitter or facebook and you're bound to have miscommunication.
What do you do to keep your internet interactions kind and friendly?
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