Me is judgmentil about communacation.
While I’ve long prided myself in my ability to communicate with visuals I’ve never considered my ability to communicate with words to be very strong. As Steve Martin puts it “Some people have a way with words, and other people … not have way.”
My biggest downfall has been spelling. I’ve got a friend (who shall remain anonymous … Jeff McMahon) who can look at a page of text and see a misspelled word. Me? I can look at a page of text and see a poorly kerned word. So, when I see something misspelled it must be a doozy. (See photo below.)
When I see something misspelled or the use of poor grammar I make a judgment about the author. “Oh, must not be very smart.” Or “Must be a southern bumpkin.” Truth be known, I’ve got a friend who has C- spelling and B- grammar but was the CEO of a large company and has done very well in his professional career.
So, that raises the question about communication. How important is grammatical and spelling accuracy? Someone once told me “I’d rather be rich than right.” You could certainly take this statement a number of ways but for me who likes to work with a great deal of analysis and tweaking it means giving up some of accuracy to just keep moving forward. I’m certainly learning to do this on an ongoing basis.
Yes, I pride myself on doing things well. I guess more than anything I have to decide what is worth doing well and what is worth doing good enough.
Does this hand-painted sign here in Franklin, Tennessee communicate what it needs to? I believe it does. Had this kind of communication been on an investment firm I’d say it would be communicating but not sending the right message of stability, trust and longevity. While communication is more than words, communication is also in how they are presented. This all together is “message.”
I wonder what message I communicate in my writing, my speech, my appearance. There are many times I don’t really care and there are many times I do care. I’d hate to communicate a message that wasn’t consistent with my values … at least with people that I wanted it to matter.
For now, I’ll just proceed … right or wrong.
- Kyle Dreier