English is the language of business and of science, of medicine, law and literature. It is simultaneously sophisticated, simple, elegant, powerful. Something that has developed slowly over aeons to become the primary means of communication has been refined to a perfect art and science, the spirit of pure and essential communication, politeness and human progress.
thousands of years of evolution, the conveyance of necessary and polite means to essential communication become reduced to TX, J, hey, btw, tbh. What has happened here? WTF?
Of course the answer, although not in its entirety, is time. Not as in progressively improving our use of casual language over time, but more of the desire or need to manage it, to compact its intrusion upon our lives and deliver client results quickly.
Put shortly, everyone is too busy to enter long sentences into their messaging app between swigs of hot green matcha. To be honest, anyone who has to manage with the inept idiocy of Samsung’s text entry could be forgiven for communicating solely in LINE stickers, for want of not going completely mad.
This need to serve clients quickly often puts us in a place where we are responding to professional requests with stickers, emojis, abbreviations and such like, and it may not always be appropriate.
The problem with this casualization enforced through our dependence on our phones is that it opens up a hitherto non-existent grey area between formal language and casual language through a relatively new medium for business. We define our age these days as the “always-on era,” a time where work and play, home and office become interchangeable 24-7.
And so it is difficult in certain situations, specifically in those where a professional contact such as a client needs a quick reply through a new, immediate messaging app.
Nobody has time to wait for grammar and punctuation, right?
This need to serve clients quickly often puts us in a place where we are responding to professional requests with stickers, emojis, abbreviations and such like, and it may not always be appropriate.
Indeed, in cases where your contact at the client’s business may be something of a friend, or where the casual relationship has already been established, this is not a problem. But it is always worth taking a few seconds out of a busy day, even putting the Starbucks down for a moment, step back from the AMOLED panel and just think, “Is it appropriate to speak to my client or Director in this way?”
There is not a yes or no answer. The judgement call is up to you, and I’m afraid your smartphone’s preferred answer would be biased towards convenience and conviviality – although that one-click thumbs-up LINE sticker may not be the best communication for you to use on this occasion.
This is why email is often still a preferred way to respond, as its social parameters continue to imply an arena of decency and professionalism.
So maybe just slow down and use your big words from time to time.
