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I hereby model a message delivery as an article. If a conversation/talk/speech were an article, how differently would people communicate?

The sample article

Let’s take a random article as an example.

The Heading-only style

The communication from this style only conveys the headings of the article. The communicator possibly either doesn’t want to spend more time explaining in details or expects the audience to understand upon hearing the titles.

Advantages

• Time-saving

Disadvantages

• Huh? What next?

The Wiki style

Lambrusco

Some of you may have heard me preach of lambrusco, the foaming, almost purple sparkling wine from the Emilia-Romagna region of Italy.

No, not the semi-sweet fizzy stuff that was so popular in the 1970s, but the real, dry, earthy lambrusco, from producers like Medici Ermete, Vini, Vittorio Graziano and Villa di Carlo. Served icy cold, it’s wonderful with just about any simple dish, be it fried chicken or pizza or burgers.

But you say you want a real wine (as if lambrusco weren’t real enough)? You say you want an American wine because it is, after all, practically the Fourth of July?

Description

This style is exactly like a wiki page. The communicator mentions keywords of the article, with or without priority order. Each of the keyword then links to a whole concept from other sources.

For example, when the speaker mentions “organizational behavior”, s/he could point to a book on the topic and recommend her/his audience to read the book.

Advantages

• Inter-connections of information
• From the spoken conversation, the receivers can then search for the more details with the keywords from the message

Disadvantages

• Some audience who have not known the concepts might lose track of the information mid-way

The Ad-hoc style

The communicator randomly picks paragraphs from the article and give full details of the paragraphs without or with limited conclusion.

Next time: full details of another random paragraph.

Advantages

• The audience might extract the right information in details if asking the right question.

Disadvantages

• Very hard to assemble the comprehensive but scattered information into a complete article.

The Bottom-up style

Throw the conclusion on first, then explain if questioned.

Advantages

• Just straight to the point. Exceeding time doesn’t impact much as the audience has already caught (if so) what they need.

Disadvantages

• Surprise for unprepared audience

The Full-article style

Section by section, paragraph by paragraph, word by word till the end.

Advantages

• Every full details

Disadvantages

• Time consumption

Conclusion

What is your style?

What other styles do you add to this list?

What style do you choose for which situation?

Reference

The sample article is taken from The New York Times’ Reds on Ice? It’s Not Heresy