The impact of emailing and texting on effective written communication: Changes in reading patterns, convergence of subgenres, confusion between social and business communication

Writing reader-based messages remains important in communicating with electronic media. However, additional strategies are needed to ensure that text and email messages are effective because of differences that include a change in readers' reading patterns as well as writers' tendency to conflate letters with memoranda, the telephone with texting and emails and social media with business communication. The resulting four problems in communication occur: (1) writers transfer the conventions and style of social media to technical and scientific correspondence, (2) writers transfer the functions of the telephone to email and texting, (3) writers tend to rely solely on electronic media to discuss complex issues or issues requiring immediate response and (4) writers fail to re-read, reflect and revise. These problems are evident in the emails of engineers during the Columbia Shuttle break up and in the Bp/Horizon oil rig blow out. Writers need to be brief, place important information at the beginning of a message to accommodate readers' “F” reading pattern, recognize the need for actual synchronous two-way communication, eliminate personal and social responses, reflect and revise, and respond in a timely manner.