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Future-Ready · Communication

Say What You Mean

Picture it this way: the song plays perfectly inside your head — where nobody else can hear it. That's a metaphor, not a description of your brain. Clarity is the craft of getting your idea into someone else's head undamaged.
🥁The Tapper's Mistake
♪ ♫ ♪ TAPPER hears the whole band tap · tap · tap all that actually travels no melody · no words ? ? ? LISTENER hears knuckles on wood
🎵 The song they never sent
In her 1990 Stanford dissertation, Elizabeth Newton paired 40 tappers with 40 listeners. Each tapper knuckled out three famous songs (from a list of 25) like Happy Birthday for a partner to name — 120 tries in all.
The tappers were shocked when listeners couldn't hear it — some even got frustrated. How can you not hear this?
They weren't really sending a song. They just thought they were.
PREDICTED by the tappers about 50% of songs ACTUAL what listeners got just 3 of 120 songs — 2.5% 😳 0% 50% 100% ↑ the gap between "I said it" and "they got it"
Newton's 1990 tapping study · 120 songs tapped, 3 named correctly
🧠 The curse of knowledge Knowing something well can make it hard to imagine what it's like not to know it. One tapping study with 40 pairs shows the gap; it isn't a law about every conversation. But it's why a gaming expert "explains" a boss fight in thirty seconds of pure jargon, and why a local's directions — "turn left where the old gas station used to be" — can strand a visitor. Nobody is being dumb. The sender just forgot the receiver can't hear the music — the music being a figure of speech for everything already in your head.
🧭Before You Say A Word
1
🎯 Audience
Who is receiving this? What do they already know — and what exists only in my head?
2
🏁 Purpose
If this message works perfectly, what happens next?
3
📌 Main Idea
Lead with the point — BLUF, Bottom Line Up Front. Background comes after.
4
✂️ Cut
Delete filler ("basically," "kind of"), translate jargon, and swap vague for concrete.
5
📡 Channel
Pick the medium that carries what your message actually needs.
🎚️ Same event, different message Telling your coach you'll miss practice is short and factual. Telling your best friend is a whole story with feelings in it. Change the audience or the purpose, and the right message changes too.
📌Bottom Line Up Front
✗ Point buried at the end "Hi Coach, so last week my cousins visited, and then my mom's schedule changed, and…" ⌛ the actual request comes LAST the reader has to dig for it 🔎 slower to answer ✓ Bottom line up front "Hi Coach — I need to miss Tuesday's practice." "Here's why." ↳ then the background: cousins, schedule change. ⚡ respects their time — answered faster The U.S. military drills this rule — BLUF: request first, background after.
🎯 Concrete beats vague — every single time "I'll pay you back soon" starts arguments.  "I'll pay you back Friday at lunch" ends them.
📱Pick Your Channel
LEANEST RICHEST 💬 TEXT 📞 CALL 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 IN PERSON keeps: your words keeps: words + tone keeps: everything loses: tone, face, timing loses: your face loses: nothing best for: quick facts best for: complicated plans best for: apologies · hard news ⚠️ Sarcasm dies in a text — the tone never made the trip.
🏛️Aristotle's Three Tools
🤝ETHOS
Trust. Why should they believe you?
💬 "You can believe me — I've done this before."
❤️PATHOS
Feeling. What should they care about?
💬 "Imagine how the new kid feels at lunch."
🧮LOGOS
Logic. Do the facts add up?
💬 "If we split the cost three ways, it's only four dollars each."
🕰️ 2,300 years old and still working The Greek philosopher Aristotle listed these three about 2,300 years ago. Lawyers, advertisers, and speechwriters still use them — and the clearest messages usually blend all three.
💓When Your Heart Pounds
same body signal "I'm scared" "I'm excited"
🔁 Rename the buzz
Harvard researcher Alison Wood Brooks had adult volunteers say "I am excited" out loud before singing, speaking, or doing math in front of others — on average they scored higher than volunteers who said nothing or said "I am calm." (A later replication of the speech study found the change in how people felt, but not in how judges rated them.) Anxiety and excitement send similar signals: fast heart, big energy. Renaming that energy is one option to try — calming, a pause, a break, extra practice, or asking for a different format are all fine too.
🌍Where This Shows Up
🏥Hospital handoffs
Nurses and doctors use a script called SBAR, and the order is the point: Situation (what's happening now) → Background (the context) → Assessment (what I think the problem is) → Recommendation (what should happen). The request comes last, after the listener has what they need to judge it.
🚀Closing the loop
A separate practice from SBAR: closed-loop communication runs sender → receiver repeats it back → sender confirms it was heard right. It's why radio operators read instructions back and answer "copy." SBAR shapes what you say; closing the loop checks that it arrived.
⚖️U.S. federal law
Writing clearly is literally the law: the Plain Writing Act of 2010 requires federal agencies to communicate with the public in language people can actually understand.
🔑Key Terms
🎯Audience The specific people who will receive your message.
🏁Purpose The reason you're communicating — what you want to happen when your message lands.
🪟Clarity Being so easy to understand that your idea arrives in someone else's head undamaged.
🎮Jargon Specialized vocabulary one group understands but outsiders usually don't.
🧽Concise Using the fewest words that still keep your meaning complete and clear.
📡Medium The channel your message travels through — a text, a call, a video, a face-to-face talk.
🎭Tone The feeling behind your words that tells people how you mean them. Same words, warm or eye-rolling — opposite message.
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Remember this
  1. Before you communicate, answer two questions: who is my audience, and what is my purpose?
  2. Lead with your main idea (BLUF), cut filler and jargon, and choose concrete words over vague ones.
  3. Match the medium to the message — and when nerves hit before speaking, rename the energy: "I am excited."
✏️ ClickClass Anchor Chart · Say What You Mean — The Craft of Clear Communication
From ClickClass — hundreds of free printables at clickclassedu.com/printables