When Sentiment is Lost

The Importance of Finding and Clarifying Context in our Writing

When we type words onto our screens and put them out there in the digital sphere, sentiment should sit alongside them. Without sentiment, the meaning behind the words is lost.

I read a post on Facebook recently where a husband got home from a long day of work and from the window of his car as he pulled into the driveway, he took a photo of his wife and children out the front of the house blowing bubbles. The caption simply said:

“What I come home to after a long day at work.”

The interpretation of the sentiment behind this post was severely split. Half of the comments interpreted the post as the husband complaining that his wife and kids get to relax and do fun stuff while he’s hard at work, while the other half interpret it as a loving father gazing fondly on his beautiful family in a picturesque moment of innocence and joy.

This just goes to show that sentiment and context around our online interactions aren’t always interpreted correctly.

In this case, something as simple as adding an emoji could give the social media post the sentiment it needs. For example:

What I come home to after a long day at work 🙄

VS

What I come home to after a long day at work 🥰😍

Sentiment and context is needed in all forms of writing to ensure we’re getting the right message across. Take fiction writing for example. When writing a piece of dialogue, the sentiment we give to that dialogue comes through the dialogue tag and/or beat. Here are some examples:

“I hate you!” She yelled at him across the room.

“I hate you,” she smiled and gave him a playful shove.

“I hate you,” she said, head bowed with tears streaming down her face.

Without sentiment and context, our words hold little weight and meaning. They come out as expressionless statements that can be interpreted any which way. That extra bit of context adds more feeling and increases our understanding.

In almost every context, sentiment can be enhanced in our writing, except perhaps in formal writing or a work email. Including emojis probably isn’t seen as very professional (although I do add a smiley face to internal emails at times).

Emotions and feelings don’t often need to be attached to professional, fact based content. There is no inherent meaning behind a business report full of facts and figures, so sentiment need not apply – unless you’re conversion rate is at an unacceptable rate, in which case, turn that text to red or highlight it in a similar angry tone to make that sentiment known. Or if you have a table full of reach, growth and engagement figures performing really well for your client, make those boxes green baby!

Well, I guess I just proved myself wrong there. Sentiment can still be found there too it seems, in a more subtle form.

Sentiment is rife in marketing, although it’s often written in a way that makes it harder to recognise.

A piece of marketing content is often designed to lure prospects in to complete a call to action such as hitting the ‘contact us’ button. The goal is for the marketing content to be so convincing that they simply had to enquire about the product immediately. Obviously.

And what is a classic way to do that? By evoking your emotions.

Consider all those cheesy infomercials on TV, exaggerating the frustrations of every day life when you don’t have the product they’re trying to push. The infomercials are designed to replicate that feeling of relatable frustration and counter it with calm and order when the product is used.

In the context of marketing content, here’s what you may find:

My all-in-one magical dish cloth is available to purchase now.

Zero sentiment. All facts. Does it make you want to buy it? No. I have enough dish clothes at home already.

Are you tired of throwing out countless dishcloths in the trash after only one use? Choose an eco-friendly solution instead that cleans better and faster.

This one holds a negative sentiment. They want you to feel bad for throwing out your dish cloths and guilt trip you into buying their eco-friendly version.

Do you want a dish cloth that leaves your dishes sparking clean in half the time it would take using a normal dish cloth? Not only does it clean better, but it lasts twice as long and best of all, it’s biodegradable, making it eco friendly too.

This one holds a positive sentiment by expressing all the wonderful positives you’ll receive and all the ways your dish cleaning journey will improve my using this cloth.

So whether it’s in innocent social media posts, essay writing, fiction writing or writing for marketing purposes, don’t forget to consider the sentiment behind you message to make sure the right message is gets through loud and clear.

I hope this has been useful in your day-to-day writing tasks! If so please tap the love heart, share this post or leave me a comment.

Have you come across any content recently where the sentiment was lost?