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My philosophy on this is that there is a very high value on being brief. Even one less word can make the difference between a message seeming to long too bother
by sopooneo 14y ago
My philosophy on this is that there is a very high value on being brief. Even one less word can make the difference between a message seeming to long too bother with and actually getting read.
- marcosdumay 14y agoSounding like a human will add more value than removing every word you can. Unless, of course your target audience isn't human or doesn't like to read human generated text (a trait that everyone seems to aquire while in front of a UNIX system). Sounding like a human will make people read more of your message than simply making it brief, and understand it better. Also, it will make people like it more. But that doesn't means that you should apologize. You must give all your messages the same personality, and some kinds of personality just don't apologize...
- sopooneo 14y agoI very much agree that there is a balance to be struck, and messages designed for people to read should be composed with that fleshy audience in mind. However, if a polite message goes unread, the effort was in vain. And getting computer users who are not techies to actually read messages is very difficult. I've found brevity helps a lot. To your point, though, it may be the case that if all messages were a bit more empathetic, people would stop ignoring them so often.