Transcript of a short episode of the Influence Every Day podcast (hosted by Dr. Ed Tori) exploring how punctuation and emphasis change meaning and perception. The speaker demonstrates this using the six-word sentence “woman without her man is nothing,” showing how different punctuation and vocal emphasis produce very different interpretations, and argues that reframing punctuation/emphasis in our lives can shift relationships and personal narratives.
Chapters
This is Dr. Torrey. Welcome to the Influence Every Day show, where we make every day better and we influence for good.
There's a social media post that I was about to put on LinkedIn, but I was too scared, so I didn't post it. And let me explain it to you, and I think it will help you a lot as you think about your life and your own perceptions of what you've experienced. I was about to put a post that had six words on it. No punctuation, no context, nothing else. It was just going to say, woman without her man is nothing.
Six words.
Woman without her man is nothing. Those six words strung together was going to be the first thing people saw, and then it was going to be a carousel, and it was going to say, what do you see when you see this sentence? How did this make you feel? How did this string of words put together make you feel? What was your experience? And you see how we see those words, how we organize those words creates meaning. And this is where we have to be really, really, really careful. The reason I was so scared to put it out, and I still. I'm still debating, maybe there's another way I could do it. Where I put it. Put this whole concept, this whole podcast, all on one tile, rather than a carousel where they swipe through different tiles. Because I think the way we scroll, it's high risk for people to rush to judgment if they see woman without her man is nothing. If they see it that way, what they won't realize until I show them or demonstrate is that where you put the punctuation changes everything. Where you put the punctuation in those six words changes everything, even if you keep them in the same order. If it was woman, comma, without her man, comma, is nothing, well, that might be offensive to some, but what if I change it? What if I said woman, colon, without her colon, comma, man is nothing. You see those two things. How we punctuate the words we we hear, how we punctuate the words we see. When you're looking at an email, you are changing the way you read based on your own perceptions, your own biases, your own things that fire you up, and the things that you assume. You have a ton of assumptions when you're looking at someone else's words on a text or on an email. And so this is where we need to be really careful. But what's really super powerful about this is that we can actually change our assumptions. We can say, wait a minute, maybe they didn't mean it that way. What I was hoping was that people that know me on social media would know that, like, there's no way he put woman without her man is nothing. Like, you know, there's no way he did that. It must mean something else. I have to read more because I know Ed Tory well. This is really powerful for our own lives because we do the same thing with our experiences. We punctuate our experiences. We punctuate the stories we tell. And sometimes when you have a coach, sometimes it's therapy, Sometimes it's just sincere advice from a loved one or a friend, it can actually completely shift your perspective. You know why? Because they're shifting the punctuation. You had this experience followed by that experience, followed by that experience, and then they shift the punctuation, and all of a sudden you see it differently. Be careful where you put the punctuation in your own life, in your own experiences, and certainly be careful how you punctuate and how you read texts, how you read messages, and how you read emails, because those are actually a greater reflection of you than they are of the person sending the thing. It might be a little bit of both. But keep in mind, how you punctuate will change its meaning. It will change how it's received. It will change how it's seen. It will change how you are viewed. It will change your relationship. How you punctuate your experiences will change your entire life. Now, the same thing goes for emphasis. If you look at emphasis in any one sentence, and this is why reading stuff is sometimes super challenging when it comes to email and texts and things like that, is because where we put the emphasis, sometimes when I give talks, I'll use this phrase, she said she told Dr. Tori. Now, depending on where I put the emphasis, it could have completely different meaning.
She said she told Dr. Tori.
Implying that she didn't actually say it.
She said, she told Dr. Tory. She said, she told Dr. Tori. She said, she told doctor Tori.
Air quotes or smirky face as if. As if he's not an actual doctor. Changing the emphasis changes the entire meaning of the sentence.
She said she told Dr. Torrey. She said she told Dr. Tory. She said she told Dr. Torrey. She said she told Dr. Tori.
Very different sentences, very different meanings. But what's the voice inside of your head? Where are you putting the emphasis? Not only that, let's take a look at our own experiences. Look at the string of things that have occurred in your life. The relationships you've had, the experiences you've had, the places you've worked, the places you've learned the neighbors, the friends, the family members, the Thanksgiving dinners, the all the experiences you've had, the holidays. Think about all those things where you put the emphasis completely changes your experience. This is why I highly recommend you surround yourself with people of good perspective. People who can shift the punctuation in your life, who can shift the emphasis in your life so that it's better. It's all about influencing for good. In my book Hypnotic Gifts, this is one of the tools that you use to shift somebody in a single conversation. One of the tools is simply to repunctuate or re emphasize the things you've learned in the small talk and in the big talk or deep talk. Along the way, the resource states the problem states how you punctuate it for the other person can completely change how how they see meaning in their lives and their experiences. You can actually shift someone's life in a single conversation and I'll help you with that in the book Hypnotic Gifts. But for now, just pay close attention to how you felt when you first saw the words woman without her man is nothing. And then when you heard it shift by changing the punctuation woman without her man is nothing. Very interesting. How did you hear it? How did you see it? How are you going to shift your future experiences and the words that you hear and read and see? And what assumptions are you going to make to make sure that you assume the best in others and work on those relationships? How you hear the words, how you emphasize them, how you put the punctuation will completely change your experience and your relationships. I'll see you in the next episode.
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