Are We Reading Texts All Wrong?

I can't be the only woman who has looked at a perfectly ordinary text message and thought, “Wait. What does that mean?”

Not what does it say.

What does it “mean”?

There's a difference.

Someone sends, “Okay.”

And suddenly I'm looking at the period.

Why is there a period?

Was that an angry okay?

A regular okay?

An “I'm done talking to you” okay?

Then there is the thumbs up.

👍

That innocent little thumb has probably caused more unnecessary confusion than it ever deserved.

I grew up in a time when a thumbs up meant exactly what it looked like.

Good.

Okay.

Got it.

Apparently, we've entered an era where even punctuation and emojis can have attitudes.

And the more I've been around people of different ages, the more I've realized something.

We might be looking at the exact same text message and reading two completely different conversations.

I Have Definitely Read Tone That Wasn't There

Texting was supposed to make communication easier.

Need somebody to pick something up from the store?

Text them.

Running ten minutes late?

Text them.

Want to know what time everybody is meeting?

Text them.

Perfect.

But somewhere along the way, texting became where we started having almost every kind of conversation.

Friendship conversations.

Dating conversations.

Family disagreements.

Apologies.

Arguments.

Breakups.

Long explanations that require scrolling three times before you reach the end.

And that's where things can get messy.

I've read texts before and genuinely wondered how I was supposed to take them.

Was she being short with me?

Was he irritated?

Why didn't she respond to the other part of what I said?

Why did that answer feel different?

Sometimes we aren't responding to the words someone sent us anymore.

We're responding to the tone we've given those words in our own head.

That's a dangerous little game because the other person isn't standing there to correct us.

We can't see her face.

We can't hear whether she's laughing.

We can't hear exhaustion in her voice.

We don't know if she typed “okay” while irritated with us or while standing in the grocery store trying to stop her avocados from rolling out of the cart.

We fill in the missing pieces.

And sometimes we fill them in completely wrong.

Apparently, We All Have Our Own Texting Rulebook

The funny thing is that I think most of us believe our way of texting is fairly normal.

Until we text somebody who doesn't text like us.

Different generations have grown up with completely different ways of communicating.

Some of us remember when calling someone's house meant there was a very real possibility that her mother, father, brother, sister or whoever happened to be closest to the telephone was going to answer first.

Privacy was a luxury.

Then came answering machines.

Pagers.

Then email.

Then cell phones.

Then texting.

Now we've got voice notes, reactions, GIFs, disappearing messages and enough emojis to communicate an entire emotional crisis without typing one actual word.

So of course we don't all use our phones the same way.

Older generations are often more comfortable with complete sentences and punctuation, while younger people are generally more comfortable with shorter messages, lowercase letters and less punctuation.

Those are trends, not personality tests, and plenty of people break the pattern.

Still, the differences can be hilarious when they collide.

One woman sends:

“Sounds good.”

She means:

Sounds good.

The woman receiving it sees that period and thinks:

“Well. Somebody has a problem.”

One person sends 👍 because she means, “Got it.”

Someone else sees 👍 and thinks, “Well, excuse me.”

Meanwhile, someone hasn't answered for four hours and one woman thinks nothing of it.

Another one has reread the conversation six times and mentally reviewed everything she has said since Tuesday.

We laugh, but I've learned something from this.

A lot of the rules we think everybody knows aren't rules at all.

They're habits.

They're expectations.

They're things we picked up from our families, our friends, our generation, our workplaces and the people we spend the most time talking to.

Then we get offended when somebody breaks a rule she never knew existed.

Maybe There Isn't One Right Way to Text

I used to think texting had a pretty clear right way and wrong way.

And I still think there are things that come down to basic consideration.

If I'm sitting across from you at dinner, I don't want to spend the whole evening looking at the top of your head while you're texting somebody else.

If I send someone twelve messages because she hasn't answered the first two, I probably need to put the phone down.

If something is truly urgent, I can't assume a text will be seen immediately.

And having a phone doesn't mean any of us has agreed to be available twenty-four hours a day.

That part matters to me.

We've gotten so used to immediate access that sometimes we confuse “being reachable” with “owing someone an immediate response”.

Those aren't the same thing.

Current etiquette advice has actually moved away from expecting instant responses.

Context matters, and people have different schedules and communication habits.

I like that.

Because I don't want every unanswered text to become evidence that somebody doesn't care about me.

And I don't want somebody assuming I don't care because I didn't answer while I was working, sleeping, driving, spending time with another person or just living my life.

Sometimes a late reply is just a late reply.

That has been a good thing for me to remember.

Some Conversations Have No Business Living in a Text Thread

This is probably where I've become the clearest about my own texting rules.

There comes a point when we need to put the phone down and actually talk.

I know texting can feel easier.

You get time to think.

You can rewrite something before sending it.

You don't have someone responding while you're still trying to figure out what you're feeling.

And sometimes writing something down really does help us say what we're trying to say.

But texting also gives us something dangerous.

Distance.

It's much easier to type something harsh than to look someone in the face and say it.

It's easier to misunderstand someone when we can't hear her voice.

And it's very easy for two people to spend an hour arguing about something that might have been cleared up in ten minutes if somebody had finally said, “Can I just call you?”

There's actually disagreement about whether serious conversations should happen through text.

Some people communicate difficult feelings better when they have time to write and think.

But text also strips away vocal tone and other cues that help us understand one another, which makes emotionally loaded conversations easier to misread.

So, I don't believe every serious conversation has to happen face to face.

Life isn't that neat.

But I have developed one personal rule.

When we start sending paragraphs explaining what our previous paragraphs meant, the conversation has probably outgrown the text thread.

Call me.

Let's hear each other.

Because at that point, we're no longer saving time by texting.

We're spending twice as much time cleaning up what texting confused.

I Don't Want to Build a Whole Story from Four to Five Words

Maybe this is the biggest thing texting has taught me.

I don't want to create a whole story about somebody based on four or five words and a period.

I don't want to decide someone is angry before asking.

I don't want to assume a delayed response means rejection.

I don't want to take a thumbs up personally.

And Lord help me, I don't want to spend twenty minutes analyzing why someone said “sure” instead of “yes.”

Sometimes “sure” is just sure.

I've learned that if a message bothers me enough that I'm still thinking about it later, I can ask what the person meant.

That has saved me from conversations I was having entirely by myself.

Because let's admit it.

We've all had an argument with somebody who had absolutely no idea the argument was taking place.

She's somewhere peacefully folding laundry while we're mentally presenting Exhibit A through Exhibit G.

Meanwhile, she meant exactly what she typed.

Maybe Good Texting Is Really About Knowing Who We're Talking To

The older I get, the less interested I am in deciding which generation has texting figured out.

I don't think any of us do.

We just learned different versions of it.

Maybe good communication isn't about everybody texting the same way.

Maybe it's about knowing the person on the other side.

My mother might use punctuation differently than my daughter.

A friend might answer slowly because that's how she uses her phone.

Someone else might send three words where I would send three paragraphs.

None of that automatically tells me how much someone cares about me.

Patterns still matter.

How people communicate with us over time matters.

Ignoring someone repeatedly matters.

Being disrespectful matters.

Using silence to punish someone matters.

But one short text?

One strange emoji?

One period?

I don't want to hand those things more power than they deserve.

Sometimes we need to ask.

Sometimes we need to call.

Sometimes we need to put the phone down and stop rereading the message.

And sometimes we need to remember there's an actual human being on the other side of that little screen, carrying her own habits, her own communication style and her own invisible rulebook.

Maybe the goal isn't for all of us to text alike.

Maybe it's to give each other enough room to say, “Wait, I think I read that differently than you meant it.”

Then talk.

Because I'd rather clear up one misunderstood text than lose something meaningful over a conversation neither one of us was actually having.

#EvolvingWomanhood

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