More Texting Tips for Better Communication

In How to Improve Communication by Text and Texting, we saw how social media makes writing more contextual. You use different styles for Facebook, formal letters, and texting. And for many of us, texting is the most common. How many texts do you send a day? I probably send 519.3. At least. Anything you do that often, you want to do well. Otherwise, it’s wasted effort. Here are a few pro texting tips to help you step up your game.

Make it Clear When You're Done

I’m a big text guy. Text conversations with me go like this:

THEM
Movie tonight?

ME
Sure! Which one?

THEM
Into the Spiderverse. 7 pm

ME
YES YES YES YES!!!

THEM
Great. See you there.

ME
Looking forward to it. By the way, I heard that you and your parents got into a big fight. I hope everything’s OK.

THEM
I’m at work. Let’s talk later.

ME
OK, but I really want to be sure you’re OK. By the way, have you seen the headlines about that book? It’s really interesting. Researchers have found…

Sitting alone in my living room writing Get-it-Done Guy episodes does not, contrary to popular belief, satisfy my need for social connection. So, when someone texts, I just keep that conversation going any way I can, even if I have to resort to sending cat pictures.

When you want to make it clear to someone like me that the conversation is over, you can always use a reaction, as I recommended in my last article on texting. (You perform a reaction when you tap a message and send something like a thumbs-up or an exclamation point instead of responding with text.) But not everyone knows that means “Really, Stever, you’re a worthwhile human being, but please let me get back to work.”

To drive the message home for clueless folks like me, send a message saying “o-o.” It means “over and out.” If your overly-texting friend understands the lingo, no matter how needy they are, they’ll stop. It’s just too unambiguous. (Darn you!) If they don’t know what it means, just write “over and out” in parentheses next to the “o-o” like this:

o-o (over and out)

That way you’re teaching them, even while rejecting them and dooming them to a life of loneliness. That’s very efficient of you.

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