Winner of The Attention Contest

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/winner_of_the_attention_contest/

by dan_sim • 16 years ago

62 15 16 years ago

tjmaxal• 16 years ago

I remember in high school I had a teacher who taught us the hierarchy of communication. In person is first, by phone is second and written is third. This is because more of the message is transmitted in person ie you get words,voice and body language, with the phone you only get words and voice and with the written word you only get the words themselves. To this day if I have something important to say I do my best to say it in person or on the phone. Too often in a world of e-mail, texting, and twitter we assume we are being heard clearly through words alone, but for the really important stuff nothing beats face to face communication.

JoeAltmaier3• 16 years ago

I mistyped a single letter in an email and offended a coworker for life. He was on the road; I was in the office. I argued persuasively about a difference in design, ending with "When you get it, we can talk some more". I had intended to say "When you get in, we can talk some more".

solutionyogi• 16 years ago

I had to read that sentence twice to find out the mistyped single letter but oh boy, that single letter changed the tone in its entirely.

apphacker• 16 years ago

Can't you just tell him that it was a typo?

arantius• 16 years ago

I don't know what point you're trying to make, and I don't have a snappy anecdote to back it up. But I know I've observed similar (and similarly unnoticed) slips of pronunciation. It's not like the spoken word is infallible.

jrockway• 16 years ago

I think writing provides the most control over your message. With the right construction, you can convey arbitrary emotions with any medium -- but with writing, you can try a few versions and pick the best. You can "un-say" things, and you can revise until your message makes sense.

I think the reason why people think written communication is ineffective, is because most people just can't write.

Personally, I think I talk like I write, which makes my oral communication less effective. As I'm talking, if I think of something else to say, I have to revise my previous statements so that the listener ends up with the same mental picture as me. This takes time and words. When writing, though, I can just delete the thing that I didn't really want to say, and replace it with the better version. This saves the reader time and makes me look better. I think.

(Maybe this also makes me odd, but I feel the "good feeling of social interaction" both after speaking with someone in person or after communicating with them via writing. Writing emails to my favorite girl du jour makes me as nervous as meeting her in real life.)

megablast• 16 years ago

I was working a development job, but once a week we all had to do a day of support work. We all hated, we were supporting very non-technical staff, and there tickets were often so much nonsensical jibberish, that it made it very difficult. Often it took a few emails back and forth to find out exactly what the problem was. Eventually I figured out how to use the telephone, and often a 2 minute call would sort out there problems, without any work to be done on the system. It was great to talk to these people, realise that they weren't just problems in the ticketing system, but people trying to get work done. It proved to be a lot less frustrating experience once I figured that out. My colleagues, however, never learnt this trick, despite my assurances that they should just give them a quick call.

minus1• 16 years ago

I might be odd, but what I find more interesting than the short article itself is comparing the Scott Adams edited version to the original. I'm a rather poor writer, so this is a concrete example of how to improve.

The original (Search for 'Lukeout'): http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/the_attention_contest/?Cmt...

mcav2• 16 years ago

Here's a diff between the old and new versions:

http://drp.ly/13YD4B

xiaoma• 16 years ago

That's a fantastic link. I just spent ten minutes reading through each version and checking for how Scott Adams reorganized the story. What program did you use to generate that view?

While looking at the diff, some of the edits struck me as overly formal - such as the hyphen, the elimination of the preposition at the end of a sentence and especially the use of the word "whom". I didn't notice a single one of those things while reading it in the article, though. It just flowed nicely.

Winner of The Attention Contest

Related Stories