Voice and Text Mail Pros and Cons

When it comes to messaging someone, you've got two options nowadays: you can either send a text or a voice message. Recently though, there's been a lot of discussion about which method is more preferable, and voice messaging consistently catches a lot of flak. So today I'd like to discuss the pros and cons of both types of messaging,

Text messaging is the conventional type of messaging everyone is most familiar with. Its biggest advantage is, in my opinion, the ability to structure what you want to say, develop your ideas, organize a sort of "flow" within the message to make it easier to take in and understand. I call this attribute 'quality'.
When it comes to speed, it's best to consider both parties taking part in the communication. For the sender, typing a message takes quite some time; however, it takes seconds for the receiver to read the message and understand it clearly.
Another important thing to consider is privacy. It's possible to type and read any message in a discreet manner and maintain your privacy.

Voice messaging is extremely new when compared to text messaging. Its unique quality must be the fact that it allows people to convey a greater range of emotions in their messages. Some of my groupmates also think this way.
Voice mail's another cited advantage is its speed. But again, it's important to consider both sides: the sender and the recipient. While recording a message is quicker than typing one, listening takes more time than reading. What we're able to hear is limited by the sender's speech speed, and the average person speaks roughly 130 words per minute in casual conversation. Meanwhile, average reading speed is estimated to be around 228 words per minute in English (and 184 words per minute in Russian).
The quality of voice messages is lacking as well. It's harder to structure what you want to say in speech, and as a result, the message may have a lot of unnecessary information, bloating a message with an otherwise simple idea.
Privacy issues are also present in voice messaging. Unless you have headphones, it's near impossible to listen to a voice message and keep it private in a public setting. Discreet recording would also prove to be difficult in such situations.

All in all, voice messaging seems to be objectively worse than text messaging.

Sources:
https://annavdeeva18825.blogspot.com/2020/04/text-and-voice-messages.html
https://wordcounter.net/blog/2016/06/02/101702_how-fast-average-person-speaks.html
https://iovs.arvojournals.org/article.aspx?articleid=2166061
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/dec/02/five-reasons-why-voice-messaging-is-the-next-big-thing

Book Club: Three Men in a Boat

For this year’s Individual Reading lessons I chose a rather interesting book called “Three Men in a Boat”, or, as the “complete” name of the book goes: “Three Men in a Boat: (To Say Nothing of the Dog).”

It was written in 1899 by Jerome K. Jerome, a British author, and tells a story of three men on a boating trip down the River Thames.

I chose the book because of its genre. It’s a comic novel, and I like reading fun and lighthearted books. After taking a glimpse at the book’s cover, I knew the book is going to be taking place entirely on the boat and there will probably be various antics and comedic mishaps happening in a slapstick fashion. The book’s cover matches the book’s contents well. There is humour, it’s physical and it’s also based on character’s mistakes and own ineptitude. But I’m also glad the book includes the more poetic and “philosophical” passages. I particularly liked the one about how things that weren’t considered important in the past are considered historical relics in the present.

“Will it be the same in the future?  Will the prized treasures of to-day always be the cheap trifles of the day before?  Will rows of our willow-pattern dinner-plates be ranged above the chimneypieces of the great in the years 2000 and odd?  Will the white cups with the gold rim and the beautiful gold flower inside (species unknown), that our Sarah Janes now break in sheer light-heartedness of spirit, be carefully mended, and stood upon a bracket, and dusted only by the lady of the house?”

I don’t think there are any problems that the book tries to tackle, as it’s just a comical novel.

I think my groupmates could be interested in reading this book, as it is fun and easy to read, and its humour and witticisms are pretty much timeless and can still be understood in spite of the massive time gap between today and the years the book was written in.