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Choose Your Words As If They Matter
Hint: They really do.
Writers think an awful lot about words. But, when you think about it, you realize that all people who speak should think about them even more. And in this age of texting, short messages by email, and all the other amazing technologies with which we have endeavored to communicate more effectively, words matter more than ever.
Communicate face to face as often as you can
The trouble is, we have made things much worse due to three simple realities of our modern age. The first problem is that we no long communicate face to face as nature directed our species to do, given evolutionary time and our former, tribal regionalism.
The second challenge is that there are more demands for us to connect to others, for example, even when it is with a two-word text. More than ever before, we ‘message.’ We now typically confirm appointments by text or email, whereas traditionally, we used to make appointments face to face with real people. This means we direct a one way act, and wait for a recipient to do the same. We now shop and very often work, in the same way.
We don’t even meet with our friends as much, or talk on the phone. Whether some of this evolved from too much screen time with entertainment binging, gaming, or a host of…