Week 9 Lecture: Dating without documentation

Why text is worse at carrying tone than its author believes, and what that means for reading between the lines

Open the slides

Introduction#

The opening of a real message, recovered from a phone’s drafts folder, typed in one unbroken forty-minute sitting and never sent: “hey!! okay so this is going to sound weird and you can totally just ignore this if it’s weird, no pressure at all—” read aloud, then stop. Now guess the total length. It was six hundred words. People reliably overestimate how clearly their tone comes across in text; today’s scope is text-based tone misjudgement, reading and writing an answerable message, and flirting only, which explains why overthinking a message doesn’t make it any clearer.

Definitions#

Asking someone out (verb phrase)

directly proposing a specific, named activity, at a specific, named time, to a specific person — as distinct from implying it at length.

Text message (noun)

a short written message sent electronically, conventionally understood to convey less tone than its author believes.

Flirting (verb)

to show superficial or casual interest or liking to another person, without providing an essay about your interests while the other person is entirely uninterested.

Body#

• Why text is bad at carrying tone. Kruger, J., Epley, N., Parker, J., & Ng, Z. (2005) found senders expected about 78% accuracy in how their intended tone would be read over text; actual accuracy was no better than chance.

Check-in: How much better than a coin flip were readers at correctly guessing tone over text, in this study?

• The six hundred words, in full. Recovered word for word from a phone’s drafts folder, where it sat for six days after being typed in a single unbroken forty-minute sitting and never sent. Reproduced exactly as written, out of academic necessity, with no edits of any kind:

  hey!! okay so this is going to sound weird and you can totally just ignore this if it’s weird, no pressure at all, but I’ve been meaning to say hi for a while now and I just never really found the right moment, like there’s never really a “right moment” is there, everyone always talks about finding the right moment but I think that’s kind of made up if I’m honest, anyway that’s not the point, the point is I remember you mentioned in that one lecture (I think it was week 3? or maybe week 4, I genuinely can’t remember, my memory for weeks is terrible but my memory for what people say is actually really good, which is a weird combination I know) that you liked urban beekeeping, and I thought that was really cool because I’ve always wanted to try that but never had the guts to, and I don’t know, I guess I just wanted to say that was cool, and also maybe ask if you wanted to get coffee sometime, no worries if not though, genuinely no pressure, I’m not going to be weird about it either way, we can just pretend this never happened if you’d rather, actually wait, ignore that, that makes it sound like I want you to say no, I don’t want you to say no, but I also don’t want you to feel like you HAVE to say yes, anyway I’m going to stop typing now because I think this message is getting long, sorry, I’ll stop, okay bye, unless you want to say something, in which case, hi.

  A shared class, three hobbies, a five-year plan, and a joke needing context the reader didn’t have — repeated hedges and self-interruptions, all consistent with a sender overestimating how clearly the words alone were landing.

Check-in: What did all the words after 'I thought that was really cool' actually add?

• Reading between the lines, and cutting your own. For someone else’s ambiguous message, the same technique from Week 7 applies: diagnose what’s actually being said before responding to the words on the surface. For your own messages, run the edit in reverse: cut everything that isn’t the one question you actually want answered, then check that what’s left is still answerable with a yes, a no, or a time. If it can’t be answered in one line, it isn’t one question yet.

Check-in: Which single sentence in the 600-word message is the one actual question?

• Flirting doesn’t require decoding. State the specific thing you noticed and the specific thing you’re proposing — not an implication the other person has to interpret. “I liked that you mentioned urban beekeeping — want to get coffee sometime?” survives being read literally; six hundred words of hedging doesn’t.

Check-in: Which reads more clearly: stating your interest directly, or hedging it inside six hundred words?

In-lecture activity#

Conclusion#

More words rarely means clearer tone — this reframes overthinking a message as measurable and common, not a personal flaw. You now know why six hundred words didn’t help, and how to cut your own message down to the one question inside it. Coming up: this week’s lab (the 600-word message and reading between the lines).

This week’s reflection, due 12:00 Tuesday of week 10 and optional as always for this week: draft one opening message this week, then cut it down until it contains exactly one question the other person could actually answer.