Elliptical Communication…
// October 28th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // Musings
Photos used under Creative Commons from Davide Restivo
I once had a professor in college that referred to my writing as elliptical. To him, it felt like you could put an ellipses (‘…’) before and after many of my statements, leaving large wholes in my arguments like potholes in the road.
Even today I am plagued with this style of communication. I think and write at the big picture and detail level, failing to connect the two. I have real problems adding context and building connective tissue in my communication.
There are many reasons why this might be. I have minor forms of dyslexia and ADD. I assume everything is obvious. I have trouble seeing the missing details. Did I mention the ADD… ooh… shiny.. BRB
In my life I have found that my closest friends and I seem to be able to communicate telepathically or my friends are smarter than I and can piece my thoughts together. Sometimes my thoughts are no greater than gestures at possible strings of thought.
So why is this a topic to bring up on my blog?
A moment of revelation…
I realized that one of the reasons I love and flourish in social media circles is because of my elliptical thought. This media is one place where elliptical thought is not only OK, but a powerful tool.
Twitter is a great place for dropping my big ideas in little packages.
Blogging let’s me tease out and examine some of the smaller details of some of my thoughts.
And with both, I do not need a connection point, it can all be tangential and that is perfectly acceptable.
Long live elliptical thought and social media!!
