This week the students in my Advanced Composition class are writing about miscommunication. In this era of 24-hour connections via computer and television, examples of misfires are all around us. The class began by brainstorming a list of miscommunications based on different accents, cultures, customs and beliefs. Then we proceeded to more abstract failures in understanding: language that’s too technical for our level of expertise, or that assumes a perspective we don’t share. Even our gender, according to author Deborah Tannen (“You Just Don’t Understand Me”), leads to communication that’s rife with misunderstanding.

With all these potential sources for miscommunication, it’s a miracle we ever understand one another at all! Yet we are driven to connect more frequently than ever before. People update one another by e-mail, text message, Twitter and Facebook. Those technologies, however, create new areas of miscommunication; virtual messages are often without benefit of facial expression or voice intonation, leading one person’s “joke” to become another’s insult.