I have been noticing for some time in a lot of threads here that some people are being misunderstood/misinterpreted. Then Thursday and Friday, it happened on one of my threads to the point that my thread was derailed as such, so I decided I would make this thread try and help people understand how challenging it is to accurately interpret what is being said.
If a group of people got together and had a discussion about a topic, there may be some misunderstandings, but not as many as if the discussion was put in writing like on a forum. The reason for this is, when you are together, you are able to see the body language and pick up on tone of voice, therefore most of the information is interpreted accurately.
It is the exact opposite for written stuff as you cannot pick up on body language or tone of voice.
It is normal for us to make an initial judgment and go by that, including myself on occasion. I would like to be able to encourage as many people as possible to try to interpret what you are reading, more than once so, then they may just pick up on what is really being said, then it allows for an appropriate reply. The reason I say this is, I know of 1 instance where a life was lost due to the misinterpretation of a single word that was written, it was even more dangerous, because the person who wrote it was naturally racked with guilt and became suicidal. Now I know something like that is very unlikely to happen because of a forum, I am simply pointing out how the correct interpretation of written text is very difficult to make at times.
The aim of this thread is to try make the reading and replying of posts or even emails just that wee bit more enjoyable and so that we don't get offended by anything that wasn't supposed to be offensive at all.
Thank you for reading this thread and I hope it makes perfect sense to you.
If a group of people got together and had a discussion about a topic, there may be some misunderstandings, but not as many as if the discussion was put in writing like on a forum. The reason for this is, when you are together, you are able to see the body language and pick up on tone of voice, therefore most of the information is interpreted accurately.
It is the exact opposite for written stuff as you cannot pick up on body language or tone of voice.
It is normal for us to make an initial judgment and go by that, including myself on occasion. I would like to be able to encourage as many people as possible to try to interpret what you are reading, more than once so, then they may just pick up on what is really being said, then it allows for an appropriate reply. The reason I say this is, I know of 1 instance where a life was lost due to the misinterpretation of a single word that was written, it was even more dangerous, because the person who wrote it was naturally racked with guilt and became suicidal. Now I know something like that is very unlikely to happen because of a forum, I am simply pointing out how the correct interpretation of written text is very difficult to make at times.
The aim of this thread is to try make the reading and replying of posts or even emails just that wee bit more enjoyable and so that we don't get offended by anything that wasn't supposed to be offensive at all.
Thank you for reading this thread and I hope it makes perfect sense to you.
