Communication or comprehension?

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“I used to think that communication was key until I realized comprehension is. You can communicate all you want to someone but if they don’t understand you, it won’t reach them the way you need it to.”

There is a lot of truth to this message, which is making the rounds on social media.

When I first started at the Citizen more than 12 years ago, I had difficulty with one of the most basic parts of the job: editing.

I would submit a story and it would come back to me with red lines and question marks, asking for clarification on things I thought were self-explanatory.

(Of course, I knew what was meant in the story... I wrote it.)

As time went on, I became a little more used to the process and through many proofreading/editing conversations, I realized that many things I took for granted needed extra explanation.

The City Council or School Board will sometimes discuss ongoing projects for months before making an official decision. If a story is written about the decision without providing a history from previous meetings, a reader would be lost.

Sometimes, press releases come to us full of jargon and acronyms that the agency deals with every day but need to be defined for readers who don’t work in that industry.

Considerations like these have to be taken into account for any story we publish. When I realized this, it cemented that communication is a two-way street that requires both an attentive speaker and listener. The information needs to be fully provided so people can understand and make their own opinions.

This means that a writer or speaker needs to try to understand their audience just as much as the audience needs to understand them.

This works just as well for everyday conversation. Each of us comes to a conversation with unique experiences and perspective. To reach anyone, we need to try to understand them.

It’s also important to be receptive to those experiences because their message can be just as valuable as our own. It takes people working together to get things accomplished in my experience. Speakers and writers who don’t consider their audience will deliver a message that will be misunderstood or ignored.

Paul Gaudette is the Managing Editor of the Dublin Citizen. He can be reached at publisher@dublincitizen.com.