The Message Has Failed Tone Review
The message was written. It was correct. It was deleted because it might have read as too casual, or too formal, or too short, or too much.
The first draft took forty seconds to write.
It said the thing. It was accurate. It contained all relevant information and nothing extraneous. The person writing it read it back, identified that it might come across as terse, and deleted it.
The second draft took two minutes.
The Review Process
The first draft was too short. It would seem terse. The second draft was longer but started with "hey" which might be too casual for the current situation, depending on how the current situation was being read. The third draft removed "hey" and started with the person's name, which felt oddly formal. The fourth draft was the same as the second but with "hey" replaced by nothing, starting directly with the content, which is grammatically fine but creates a specific tone that could be interpreted as abrupt.
The fifth draft was sent.
The fifth draft was almost identical to the first draft.
The Preliminary Findings
The message said what needed to be said. The message was deleted because saying what needed to be said at the length required to say it produced a tone that was open to interpretation. The review process was an attempt to close that interpretation, which produced a longer message with more interpretation surface.
Text has no facial expression. Text has no vocal inflection. Text is permanent and searchable and quotable. A message that takes forty seconds to write will be read in twelve seconds by someone who is doing three other things and who will form an impression of the writer based entirely on word choice and punctuation and whether there is a period at the end.
There should not be a period. The period is too final.
The Deleted Drafts
The deleted drafts were not wrong. They were, in most cases, clearer than the sent message. They were deleted because the person writing them could not separate how the message was from how the message might be read, and those two things are the same thing but feel different in the moment before sending.
The fifth draft was sent. It was fine. The reply came in four minutes. The reply did not reference tone.
The next message will also go through four drafts. This is the process.