misunderstanding essay

Essay on Misunderstanding Between You and Your Friend

Students are often asked to write an essay on Misunderstanding Between You and Your Friend in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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100 Words Essay on Misunderstanding Between You and Your Friend

Introduction.

Misunderstandings can occur between friends, causing distress and confusion. This essay explores a personal experience of misunderstanding with a friend.

The Incident

My best friend and I had a misunderstanding. She thought I had shared her secret with others, which I had not.

This misunderstanding caused a rift in our friendship. We stopped talking to each other for a while, creating an uncomfortable atmosphere.

Eventually, we discussed the issue. I explained my side and she understood. Our friendship was restored, stronger than before.

Misunderstandings can strain friendships, but open communication can help resolve them.

250 Words Essay on Misunderstanding Between You and Your Friend

The genesis of misunderstanding.

Misunderstandings are an inevitable part of human relationships, often resulting from differences in communication styles, perceptions, and expectations. When it comes to friendships, misunderstandings can create a rift, impacting the bond shared.

Communication Breakdown

A primary cause of misunderstandings is a breakdown in communication. Often, we assume our friends understand our thoughts and feelings without explicit articulation. This presumption can lead to misinterpretation, causing misunderstandings. For example, a friend may interpret your silence as indifference when you’re merely preoccupied with personal issues.

Perceptual Differences

Another factor is perceptual differences. Each individual perceives situations through their unique lens, shaped by their experiences and beliefs. Thus, a single situation can be interpreted differently by two friends, leading to conflicts. For instance, one might view a joke as harmless fun, while the other perceives it as offensive.

Unfulfilled Expectations

Friendships often involve unstated expectations. When these are unmet, it can lead to misunderstandings. For instance, if you expect your friend to support you in a disagreement and they choose to remain neutral, you might feel betrayed.

Resolving Misunderstandings

To resolve misunderstandings, open and honest communication is key. Discussing the issue, acknowledging each other’s feelings, and empathizing can help mend the relationship. Moreover, setting clear expectations and understanding each other’s perceptions can prevent future misunderstandings.

In conclusion, while misunderstandings in friendships are common, they can be resolved and even prevented through effective communication, empathy, and understanding.

500 Words Essay on Misunderstanding Between You and Your Friend

Misunderstandings are an inevitable part of human interaction. Regardless of the depth of a relationship, there are instances where communication breaks down, leading to confusion and discord. This essay explores a personal experience of misunderstanding between myself and a close friend.

The Birth of the Misunderstanding

The incident occurred during our final year of college. My friend, whom I’ll refer to as Alex, and I were partners for a significant project. We had divided the responsibilities equally. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, I was unable to meet my commitment for a week. I had informed Alex about this in advance, but perhaps I hadn’t communicated the gravity of the situation effectively.

The Escalation

When I returned, I found Alex overwhelmed with the accumulated workload. He was upset that I had left him to fend for himself during a crucial time. I felt guilty for my absence but also a sense of injustice, as I had informed him beforehand. This misunderstanding led to a rift between us. We were no longer just project partners dealing with academic stress; we were close friends navigating through a maze of hurt feelings and miscommunication.

Understanding the Misunderstanding

Reflecting on the situation, I realized that the misunderstanding was rooted in our differing perceptions of the same situation. While I saw my absence as unavoidable and communicated in advance, Alex saw it as an abdication of responsibility during a critical period. This disparity in our viewpoints was the real culprit behind our conflict.

Resolution and Reconciliation

Recognizing the need to address the issue, I initiated a conversation with Alex. We both shared our perspectives openly and honestly. I acknowledged his feelings of abandonment and apologized for not making my situation clearer. Alex, in turn, understood my predicament and admitted that he could have sought help from others during my absence. This conversation was a turning point in resolving our misunderstanding.

Lessons Learned

The incident taught us the importance of effective communication, empathy, and understanding in maintaining healthy relationships. We learned that misunderstandings, while unpleasant, can serve as catalysts for strengthening bonds if handled with maturity and openness.

In conclusion, misunderstandings between friends are not uncommon. However, they can be resolved by open communication, empathy, and a willingness to understand each other’s perspectives. This incident with Alex served as a valuable lesson in how to navigate through misunderstandings and, in the process, has deepened our friendship.

That’s it! I hope the essay helped you.

If you’re looking for more, here are essays on other interesting topics:

• Essay on God Is My Only Friend
• Essay on Effect of Bad Friends
• Essay on Childhood Friend

Apart from these, you can look at all the essays by clicking here .

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Beyond Intractability

The Hyper-Polarization Challenge to the Conflict Resolution Field: A Joint BI/CRQ Discussion BI and the Conflict Resolution Quarterly invite you to participate in an online exploration of what those with conflict and peacebuilding expertise can do to help defend liberal democracies and encourage them live up to their ideals.

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By Heidi Burgess

Original Publication September 2003, updated June 2013. Current Implications added by Heidi Burgess in August, 2017.

Current Implications

This article talks about misunderstandings between different cultures...particularly highlighting high-context cultures with low-context cultures. We are now seeing in the United States, how there can be cultural misunderstandings between groups that appear on the surface to be quite similar. More...

Social conflicts often involve some misunderstanding. Parties in conflict communicate by what they say (or do not say) and how they behave toward each other. Even normal interaction may involve faulty communication, but conflict seems to worsen the problem. When two people are in conflict, they often make negative assumptions about "the other." Consequently, a statement that might have seemed innocuous when two parties were friends might seem hostile or threatening when the same parties are in conflict.

Sources of Misunderstanding

All communication has two parts: a sender and a receiver. The sender has a message he or she intends to transmit, and s/he puts it in words, which, to her/him, best reflect what s/he is thinking. But many things can intervene to prevent the intended message from being received accurately.

If the communication is verbal, tone of voice can influence interpretation. The boss's words, "Hey, I noticed you were taking an especially long break this morning," could be interpreted as an attack if she or he said that in a disapproving tone, while the comment might be seen as a minor reminder about office rules if it was said in a friendly way. If the employee has a health problem that sometimes requires long breaks, the comment might have even been a friendly inquiry about what was happening and whether the employee needed any help. Here, tone of voice as well as situational and relationship factors would influence the interpretation of the message.

Nonverbal cues also are important. Is the sender's posture open and friendly, or closed and cold? Is her facial expression friendly or accusatory? All of these factors influence how the same words will be received.

In addition to how the message is sent, many additional factors determine how the receiver interprets the message. All new information we learn is compared with the knowledge we already have. If it confirms what we already know, we will likely receive the new information accurately, though we may pay little attention to it. If it calls into question our previous assumptions or interpretation of the situation, we may distort it in our minds so that it is made to fit our world view, or we may dismiss the information as deceptive, misguided, or simply wrong.

If the message is ambiguous, the receiver is especially likely to clarify it for him or herself in a way which corresponds with his or her expectations. For example, if two people are involved in an escalated conflict, and they each assume that the other is going to be aggressive and hostile, then any ambiguous message will be interpreted as aggressive and hostile, even if it was not intended to be that way at all. Our expectations work as blinders or filters that distort what we see so that it fits our preconceived images of the world. (Conflict theorists call these filters "frames." See the essay on Frames, Framing, and Reframing for more information.)

An analogy can be made to an experiment that tested people's interpretation of visual cues. When people were given eyeglasses that turned the world upside-down, they had to suffer through with upside-down images for a week or two. After that, their brains learned to reverse the images, so they were seeing things right-side up again. The same thing happens when we hear something we "know" is wrong. Our brains "fix" it so that it appears as we expect it to.

Cultural differences increase the likelihood of misunderstanding as well. If people speak different languages, the danger of bad translation is obvious. But even if people speak the same language, they may communicate in different ways.

Common differences are between high-context and low-context communication . Low-context communication stands on its own; it does not require context or interpretation to give it meaning. High-context communication is more ambiguous. It requires background knowledge and understanding (context), in addition to the words themselves, for communication. While everyone uses both kinds of communication, Western cultures tend to use low-context communication more often, while Eastern and Latin American and African cultures tend to use high-context communication. If such differences are not understood and adjusted for, misunderstanding is almost inevitable.[1]

Culture also affects communication by influencing the recipients' assumptions. As described above, our minds try to twist incoming information to make it fit in our worldview . Since different cultures have very different worldviews, cross-cultural communication is especially likely to change meaning between sender and receiver, as the sender may have a very different worldview from the receiver.

Given our tendency to hear what we expect to hear, it is very easy for people in conflict to misunderstand each other. Communication is already likely to be strained, and people will often want to hide the truth to some extent. Thus the potential for misperception and misunderstanding is high, which can make conflict management or resolution more difficult.

How to Avoid Misunderstanding

In conflict situations, avoiding misunderstanding takes a lot of effort. Roger Fisher and William Ury list four skills that can improve communication in conflict situations.

• The first is active listening . The goal of active listening, they say, is to understand your opponent as well as you understand yourself. Pay close attention to what the other side is saying. Ask the opponent to clarify or repeat anything that is unclear or seems unreasonable (maybe it isn't, but you are interpreting it wrong). Attempt to repeat their case, as they have presented it, back to them. This shows that you are listening (which suggests that you care what they have to say) and that you understand what they have said. It does not indicate that you agree with what they said, nor do you have to. You just need to indicate that you do understand them. [2]
• Fisher and Ury's second rule is to speak directly to your opponent. This is not considered appropriate in some cultures, but when permitted, it helps to increase understanding. Avoid being distracted by others, or by other things going on in the same room. Focus on what you have to say, and on saying it in a way that your opponent can understand.
• Their third rule is to speak about yourself, not about your opponent. Describe your own feelings and perceptions, rather than focusing on your opponent's motives, misdeeds, or failings. By saying, "I felt let down," rather than "You broke your promise," you will convey the same information, in a way that does not provoke a defensive or hostile reaction from your opponent. This is often referred to as using " I-statements " or "I-messages," rather than "you-messages." You-messages suggest blame, and encourage the recipient to deny wrongdoing or to blame in return. I-messages simply state a problem, without blaming someone for it. This makes it easier for the other side to help solve the problem, without having to admit they were wrong.
• Fisher and Ury's fourth rule is "speak for a purpose." Too much communication can be counterproductive, they warn. Before you make a significant statement, pause and consider what you want to communicate, why you want to communicate that, and how you can do it in the clearest possible way.

Other rules might be added to these four. One is to avoid inflammatory language much as possible. Inflammatory language just increases hostility and defensiveness; it seldom convinces people that the speaker is right. (Actually, it usually does just the opposite.) Although inflammatory remarks can arouse people's interest in a conflict and generate support for one's own side, that support often comes at the cost of general conflict escalation . Making one's point effectively without inflammatory statements is a better option.

Likewise, all opponents should be treated with respect. It doesn't help a conflict situation to treat people disrespectfully; it just makes them angry and less likely to listen to you, understand you, or do what you want. No matter what you think of another person, if they are treated with respect and dignity -- even if you think they do not deserve it -- communication will be much more successful, and the conflict will be more easily managed or resolved. Engaging in deep conversations (through problem-solving workshops or dialogues ) can also reduce misunderstanding by improving relationships , by providing more context to communication, and by breaking down stereotypes that contribute to negative characterizations or worldviews. The more effort one makes to understand the person sending the message, the more likely the message will be understood correctly.

This article talks about misunderstandings between different cultures...particularly highlighting high-context cultures with low-context cultures. We are now seeing in the United States, how there can be cultural misunderstandings between groups that appear on the surface to be quite similar. Republicans and Democrats in the U.S. are mostly all low-context communicators, yet they seem to be almost completely talking past each other. Each sees the world in fundamentally different ways--their interests are different, their understanding of facts is different, their reasons for advocating various policies are different.

Certainly some of this difference is the result of media manipulation, which spawns not only misunderstanding, but distrust and even hatred as a result of propaganda. Extreme stereotyping of "the other," also prevents effective cross-group communication, so when communication between groups occurs (which is becoming increasingly rare as we self-segregate into different parts of the country), the messages are very likely to be misinterpreted.

Much needs to be done to get the right and the left talking at all. But once they start, mediators or facilitators are going to be needed to try to reduce misunderstandings and build a groundwork for coexistence and tolerance.

This is one area where every individual can make a difference. When we talk to our family members who have different belief systems, for example, take care to use good conflict communication skills (see particularly the articles on empathic listening and I-messages) among others, instead of escalatory communication. This grave conflict within the United States is only going to be defused (if it is), one conversation at a time--and it is incumbent upon all of us to start having those disarming, de-escalatory conversations.

Heidi Burgess, August, 2017.

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[2] Edward T. Hall,  Beyond Culture . (New York: Anchor/Doubleday, 1971)

[2] We have more detail on active listening on this website in an article called empathic listening --because the author argued that empathy and listening were too closely linked to write two different articles--so he combined them into one.  

Use the following to cite this article: Burgess, Heidi. "Misunderstandings." Beyond Intractability . Eds. Guy Burgess and Heidi Burgess. Conflict Information Consortium, University of Colorado, Boulder. Posted: September 2003 < http://www.beyondintractability.org/essay/misunderstandings >.

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Mind Reading

How to resolve a misunderstanding, use these communication tips for getting along with anyone..

Posted July 22, 2015 | Reviewed by Jessica Schrader

The majority of conflict can often be traced to a simple misunderstanding. Pride, however, gets in the way as some people falsely believe that to misunderstand somehow implies fault, ignorance, lack of intelligence , and/or not having a grasp on reality. Reality is subjective. Every single person has a different point of view based on experience, triggers, culture, and a host of other items. The key in healthy communication is to understand how difficult communication can actually be and to seek to bridge the inevitable barriers that lead to misunderstanding.

To illustrate, one of my favorite examples of a misunderstanding that nearly broke a relationship was the story of my mom and dad’s first (almost) date.

My parents were teenagers when my mom moved to the same street two doors down from my father. A beautiful bright-eyed teenager with a big heart and sensitive soul, my father was immediately smitten yet took some time to become friends and then asked her out. Excited for her date, my mother spent all day with her best friend shopping in downtown San Francisco for the perfect outfit and getting her hair and makeup done. After the long day of girl fun and date prep, my dad stopped by to discuss the date details (it was a couple’s date) and time he’d come back to get her. He then asked her the fatal question that could have broken them up before they even got started (which felt extra scary when my mom told the story as it meant my brother, sister and I wouldn’t have been born)—he asked what she was going to wear. My mom was already dressed in her new outfit that she spent all of her money on and would recount that it was the nicest item she owned. She felt mortified and inadequate by his question, so she lied and said she didn’t know what she’d wear. Later she phoned him and said she wasn’t feeling well and backed out of the date. He thought she wasn’t interested in him and took someone else out instead that night. I’m not even sure when the truth came out or how they managed to work past all of that. Yet, somehow they did and perhaps that episode helped them realize that you can’t always believe what you think the other person is communicating.

In the book, “The Art of Listening,” Michael Nichols describes that even the simplest communication has multiple components that run the risk of creating misunderstanding: the listener and the speaker, their different points of view, the words they speak and the different meaning each word has for each person, the implicit message (intent versus actual words), the context, and the process of flow. Moreover, the process is more circular in nature yet might be interpreted in a more linear fashion. If this doesn’t sound complicated enough, imagine adding lots of emotion , expectations, fears, and triggers. Again, it’s a miracle any message can get across to anyone .

In addition, Nichols says that we are trained not to say what we mean from an early age. He describes that as a child, he was taught not to ask for anything at someone’s house. If he was thirsty, he would try to look extra thirsty. If offered a glass of water, he would politely decline. Then, only if they insisted, would he graciously accept the offer.

We are like perpetual people pleasers hoping the other person can read our minds and understand the game and art of mindreading. The problem is the game does not work and we generally get things wrong—no matter how “in tune” we are with others.

Listen . While seemingly obvious, many people begin crafting their reply without really listening to the other person. Or they become so emotionally charged that they are hearing the person through filters from their past or from what they think the person is saying. In addition, listen to the entire content the person is conveying. Oftentimes, people hear the beginning sentences and jump on that conclusion without realizing the person was going to go in a different direction.

Repeat . Try not to echo, yet take the time to repeat what you’ve heard and ask if that is what the person is conveying. Don’t be afraid to say “Did I understand you correctly? Are you preferring that we go to the movies instead of dinner?” or “Are you concerned that we won’t make the deadline, so you want to get a better grasp of what we’ve done to date and how long it will take?” Or, if it feels like the person is saying one thing while really expressing something else (the meta-message), you can respond with, “It might be me, yet you seem a little distant and I realize I’ve been preoccupied lately. Is that what’s bothering you or is there something else that’s weighing on your heart?”

Share. Communication is a two-way street. When one person opens up and shares their experience, reciprocate. “Oh that is how you felt. This is what I was experiencing…” Be vulnerable and do your best to articulate your feelings. Lose the pride, as pride is the enemy of honest communication.

Be flexible. Know that in spite of all of your efforts, there may still be a misunderstanding. That’s okay. Every person has a different point of view, so no two people see things exactly the same. There is no right or wrong, just the mutual sharing of different experiences on the journey of life.

Say "I," not "you." "I statements” are powerful because they keep you where you belong—speaking your feelings from your point of view and sharing your own experience. We can’t speak for others. Only they can share their feelings. We can say we were hurt by a behavior but it crosses a line when we accuse or blame the other person. However, we can say another person’s behavior doesn’t work for us because it makes us feel unsafe or uncomfortable. Telling the other person they are wrong for doing the behavior or telling them what they feel is not our business or our place (because we actually don’t know). As my good friend Rod says, “Stay in your own hula hoop.”

Learn. You’ve had a misunderstanding. Perhaps it was even cataclysmic. Grow and learn from it. Use it to foster closeness in that relationship or others. Definitely use it to create a greater awareness of what you think and feel and how you speak and listen. We are all in this life to learn and grow, so be gentle on yourself and trust the process.

Pause. If a conflict does occur as a result of a misunderstanding, give it time. Either pause a moment before reacting and try to gather clarification so you can respond , or ask for time to process. Either way, time heals all wounds—eventually.

Use these tips and keep trying. Enjoy the good feelings when you feel understood and can understand the other person, and learn from the times misunderstandings occur. The most basic need of humankind is the need for others and a sense of belonging and connectedness, so working on your listening and communication skills is truly the best gift you can give yourself and the world. We all need each other.

Kimberly Key, Ph.D., is past division president of the American Counseling Association and author of Ten Keys to Staying Empowered in a Power Struggle.

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Chapter 6: 21st-century media and issues

6.11 Miscommunication and texting (argument from experience)

Aubrey Richardson

English 102, February 2021

Living in a world with multiple forms of technology and ways to communicate, lots of words and emotions can get interpreted in the wrong way. Nowadays texting is becoming more and more popular, so now it is possible that those who text quite often are uncomfortable or awkward with in-person communication. There are so many reasons as to why texting can affect communication such as that texts only allow for one-word, single sentence thoughts and ideas to be acceptable. Truthfully, how many times can you think of that you sent someone a message like that, and it has come out wrong? Or you get a message from someone and you feel instant irritation or attitude. I think this feeling can be the same for everyone because there is no context or information behind these messages other than the rough words, so without that nonverbal communication, you create your own opinion, feeling, or expectation.

I can say myself that this has happened to me more times than I can count on two hands. With the absence of emotion, gestures, and tone, there are very little cues to help clarify what the other person may be trying to tell us. These little mishaps that may happen more often than not, which could start issues just as arguments or the silent treatment.

In the images below, I have shown the same word but the different ways it can be interpreted over text depending on the context. I showed that whether you are a boy, girl, mom or dad the different ways this word can be interpreted as. Like when texting and using one of the “okay’s” you could be saying “k” because you are in a rush or busy. You could be saying “ok” just because you simply mean ok. The other example of the word whatever, my mom uses that in text ALL OF THE TIME, but she is never mad. When she uses it, it means yes for the most part. I never knew that until I asked her if she was mad at me or not but that is just the way she texts. But my point with all of this is, you have no idea what that other person is doing, feeling, typing, or trying to say without either them texting you a message the length of a book or seeing them in person.

My first ever semester of college was this past fall, and I went through a situation as I explained above that could have been completely avoided if it was in person. I was having trouble taking my test on Blackboard and none of my questions would save. Due to this technical difficulty, I thought it would be best to go to my professor and emailed him letting him know the issues I was having with the exam. He didn’t email me back for a little while, so I simply had assumed he was busy, like most professors are around exam time. Well, when he emailed me back, he had what seemed like an attitude or as if he was frustrated with me because he was responding with one-sentence replies. As a result, I began to get frustrated because my test was graded incorrectly, and he was responding with only a couple word answers and no emotion to me is what it seemed. So, after a long day of emailing back and forth and letting me retake the exam, he had apologized about the previous emails if they sounded negative because they were not. He has said that he was remarkably busy because he was grading two other classes exams in the middle of trying to email me back. This is the major problem we face with texting and email communication because, like I said, this was not the only time this happened to me, it was just the most recent. Without being able to “read the room” or see people’s facial expressions it is almost impossible to know what their actual intentions were with that text. People often get caught up with whatever task they have at hand, so not much attention is paid to their text messages, and therefore weakening their virtual communication with others.

The real meaning of a person’s text is often times lost or misunderstood. Also, having these text message conversations loses value and meaning to face-to-face conversations where you are able to use the tone of your voice to set the mood. Often, the structure of the sentence or punctuation conveys the emotions or feelings of that message. We as teens especially are so adapted to the basic grammar, the slang of text messages, punctuation or abbreviations it often translates into school writing. Personally, I can recall sometimes I have been writing a paper or notes and accidentally written “U” instead of “YOU” or “R” instead of “ARE.” All medias like texting are not always negative and do have some positive aspects to them. People nowadays have come out with ways that you can put more emphasis in a text message. Like the use of emojis, with the different faces they convey and colors, shapes, and people. These little things can change a boring message into a more emotional text. But even with that there are cons because you don’t want to be sending smiley faces and hearts to your professors in an email or your boss in a text. This is why the use of face-to-face interaction is so important to be able to see the body language and emphasis on people’s feelings. As weird as this may be, I feel like animals may have this same thought as us humans when it comes to misinterpretation. If you use a high nice voice when you’re saying something mean they will most likely think you’re being nice. Or if you scream and you’re saying something nice, they might think you’re being mean. It Is all about the perception and how you take things.

Another instance that comes to mind that happened to me was my senior year of high school, I was at home and I had just come back from an appointment and I had to speed get ready for my cheer game for a Friday night football game. Prior to my appointment, I sent my coaches a message saying, “I might be late to the bus because I am coming from an appointment 45 minutes away” and they all said okay that’s perfectly fine. So, I thought I was okay to get ready but obviously speed though. I am about to leave and my coach texts me “Hi Aubrey. You were supposed to be to the bus 5 minutes ago. Where are you?” and I was explaining to her how I let her know earlier that I was going to be late to which she explained she forgot. So, I had said I am on my way and she said, “If you are not here in 10 minutes, we are going to have to leave without you.” I thought she was irritated or mad at me, so I tried my best to get there. Well, when I got there, all the girls were laughing because I didn’t even have my shoes on. The whole time it was a joke, but I couldn’t read the humor through the text and I thought she was actually mad.

In conclusion, assumptions can be a very dangerous thing but a lot of times they are made frequently when texting, emailing and using different types of medias. Communication is a vital tool to be able to understand your peers and the environment around you. Everyone says communication is key to anything whether that be a friendship, a relationship or just talking to people in general. The different ways you can utilize your voice and body when having face-to-face communication will not only convey your message to the other person but give it in a direct way like a text or email. When you are verbally speaking to someone, the words you are using are given meaning, while over text the meaning is often times lost. No, texting and emails will never go away and as the years go on, they will most likely grow more dominant. But it is important to use the verbal skills you were taught no matter if you are having a conversation with mom, dad, sister, friends, or a dog.

Understanding Literacy in Our Lives by Aubrey Richardson is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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Stepping Stones Study Centre

A Misunderstanding

Have you ever been misunderstood and even got a beating before? Well, I have. Let me tell you more about it…

“Remember, the composition must be handed in by tomorrow!” my teacher, Mr Tan reminded us.

It was yet another boring day in school. Every day, my teacher would give us endless homework to do.

I rushed back home the moment school ended. Without changing my uniform, I dashed to the computer and started my composition.

“Boy! Can you change your clothes first! Why are you playing computer the moment you get home?” my mother bawled her lungs at me with her face fuming red.

“Ma, I am not playing the computer! I am doing my…”

Before I could finish my sentence, a tight slap landed on my face so hard that my glasses flew off.

My mum slapped me again with the back of her hand against my other cheek. My nose and eyes were drenched and I wiped them with the back of my sleeve. I saw bright-red blood staining my hand and sleeve. Drops of blood trickled freely from my nose onto the floor. My face was probably smeared with a mixture of blood, mucus and tears.

With that, I picked up my glasses, ran to my room, slammed the door and jumped onto my bed. I allowed my tears to flow like an open tap. I was devastated.

A few seconds later, I heard the door open and thought perhaps Mum had come to apologize but I was wrong, very very wrong!

“Shouldn’t you apologize for your mistake?”

“Ma! I really was not playing the computer! Can’t you just believe me?”

Those very two words made my blood boil.

“I…I can’t b…believe that you would scold a…and beat me without listening to my explanation first!” I cried between sobs.

That sentence had no positive effect on Mum. Instead her reaction was shocking – so shocking that I could not recognize she was my mum. Out from her mouth came words I would never thought I would hear from a dainty lady – vulgarities, lots of them spurting out from her mouth.

I was dumbfounded. I had never heard my mum behaving and acting so lowly before. She must be very furious with me that the huge vocabulary of vulgarities exploded from her mouth!

It had been two months since the incident happened and we spoke nothing nor did she apologize. I will never ever forget that incident and somehow that left a permanent scar in my heart.

Sometimes, when adults, especially parents, make mistakes, they hardly ever say sorry , quite contrary to what they had taught us. Perhaps it could be due to their ‘faces’ but is keeping and protecting their ‘faces’ more important than loving their beloved child? Again, if their ‘faces’ are so important, then what about us – kids. Don’t you think we need our ‘faces’ too? Oh come on – Mums just don’t get it, do they?

The Misunderstanding Essay Questions

By albert camus, essay questions.

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Written by Elmina Jazvin

What is the mother’s role in the conspiratorial crime partnership with her daughter Martha, and what does it say about her character?

Martha and her mother are partners in crime, but right from the start it is clear that the one who holds the reins is Martha, while the mother passively follows along. From the first dialogue it is clear that the mother is tired of it, feels guilt and regret, even mentions religion catching up to her. At the end, as they follow through in killing Jan, the mother finally gives up, rather than actively facing the consequences, she decides to no longer live without her son. Passivity is the key word when it comes to the character of mother. She failed to actively teach her daughter, be an active part of her life and prevent the murderous path. At the end, she claims that her love for her son is much stronger than the love for her daughter, but even her final resolve has a sense of passivity in it. Her character further confirms the overall theme of the play, which is the theme of hopelessness of the human condition.

What is the significance of the character of the old man in the play?

The old man appears as a passive observer character in the play. He is silent throughout, save for the final scene, but his presence hold a significant weight. He refuses to meddle with the business of the characters, but keeps a watchful and knowing eye on them. All this, and even the stereotypical appearance, hints towards the meaning of the old man, which is the symbolism of godly presence. This is openly revealed at the end, with Maria praying to god and the old man making his entrance and refusing her pleas.

How is the title of the play an understatement?

The title of the play, “The Misunderstanding”, is an understatement, referring to the entirety of the play. The misunderstanding that the title refers to leads to the tragic fate of the unfortunate protagonist of the play, namely Jan. Jan finally returns home to his mother and sister, willing to help them in any way he can, while the unaware two plot his murder, as they did to many other men before. The understatement provided in the title is a further evidence of the message of hopelessness of the play. The circumstances that take place and lead to Jan’s death are ridiculous, grotesque, and darkly humorous, alluding to the ridiculous and hopeless nature of humanity.

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Study Guide for The Misunderstanding

The Misunderstanding study guide contains a biography of Albert Camus, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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Essays for The Misunderstanding

The Misunderstanding essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of The Misunderstanding by Albert Camus.

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The Biggest Misunderstanding

Human beings have the basic need to be understood. Some of our closest relations are forged on the basis of mutual understanding, trust and respect. In our life sojourn, we tend to gravitate towards people with whom we feel understood and share a mental wave-length. Being emotionally in sync with another human being helps us thrive and keeps us happy.

So, it came as no surprise to me when found myself falling rapidly in love with ‘he’ walked into my life. Here was a person who didn’t need to be told/expressed what my heart’s deepest desires were. He was so invested that it came naturally to him to be the way he was and yet make me feel completely understood. It was the rare kind of relation you experience once in a lifetime. A great human being, generous and magnanimous to the core, either he was perfect or I was blinded, in love to believe so.

To set the record straight our love was star-crossed right from the outset. Ours was an inter-community thing, which in the remotest by-lanes of a small town held a lot of significance. His parents who were dead opposed right from the start, made it amply clear that they would have nothing todo with us in case we went ahead.However, the man was steadfast in his decision and we set up to our own abode based on the love we had for each other, as the only asset.

 A month into this union and in walks his sister with her toddler after  leaving behind a fractured relationship which had left her utterly broken and embittered and brought nothing into her young life except an adorable munchkin . Though she was putting up at her parents place, yet she was a constant fixture in our house and my husband, left no stone unturned to help her gather the ruins of her life and stand up on her feet.

Young, bubbly and spirited as she was, she made the most of this opportunity, landed up with a job and was set to stride forth with confidence and élan in her life.My husband and I were in perfect sync, all this while, as in all the rest of the things we did in our life to bring back happiness in her life. However, his parents and he, secretly kept nurturing the hope that my sister and her husband would once again be reconciled eventually since divorce and separation were still unheard of, in these quarters.

However all this changed one fateful evening. The doorbell rang as I came back from work. I opened it to find my sister-in-law standing on the door holding the hands of her employer, a man from the same community to which I belonged, declaring her love and her decision to spend the rest of her life with him. The fact that his family had welcomed her and her son with open arms only bolstered their conviction to be true to each other. I was happy for her but I knew the road ahead was treacherous. I implored her not to rush into things and take thingsslowly, giving ample time to the father and brother who had held her hands steadfastly throughout to come to terms with the changing scenario. I promised to speak to my husband, making him see the love and reason behind this union. 

Time, however, conspired to create the irrefutable rift of misunderstanding between us. Before I could reach out to my husband, word reached the ears of her father and he suffered a massive cardiac arrest. The sister – in law chose to walk out hand-in hand with the love of her life and the toddler, in tow, while my husband remained behind to tend to his ailing and heart-broken parents. He never openly accused me of anything but since that date, he confessed that deserting his parents, twice, and in his hour of grief will never be an option. He never came back. The fact that the sister-in-law chose to confess in me before she allowed access to him or his parents, the fact that he belonged to the same community to which I did was enough to indict me. Without speaking a single word the chasm of understanding between us had created an immeasurable rift and set us asunder.

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Cold War II: A Big Misunderstanding Essay

The annual discussion held in Munich this year mainly concentrated on the Syrian civil war. The issue is pressing since the flow of Syrian refugees exacerbates the political situation in Europe as well as in the Middle East. In his speech, Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev shared his concerns about the world entering a new Cold War ( Munich Security Conference , 2016). That Dmitri Medvedev’s enigmatic reference to the Cold War was a mere figure of speech seems doubtful.

One has to remember that the Cold War, albeit off-the-record, was a struggle for influence conducted surreptitiously (Keylor, 2011). Be it economic pressures, diplomacy maneuvers, or acts of war in third countries, it has tried to escape a head-to-head confrontation. Both sides realized such collision would cause a nuclear war – although there were occasions when the Apocalypse seemed unavoidable (Keylor, 2011).

The current situation invokes reasonable questions on the nature of the so-called “New Cold War”: whether it is worth recollecting the 20 th -century conflict to understand the emerging one, and whether it is the long-standing political quarrel springing back into existence or something new. It appears, however, that the reference to the “Cold War”, although historically educational, can provide only an analogized understanding of the current situation and hardly derives a more or less adequate prognosis.

It is worth remembering that the Cold War has always unfolded inconspicuously. The US and Russia never attacked each other officially; nevertheless, the number of proxy wars, the arms race, and the ideological crackdowns in third countries indicates the struggle for influence was present. Among the causes urging the US to take action was the so-called Brezhnev Doctrine. The policy presupposed communist countries to assist each other in spreading communism over the world. Such conflicts as the Korean one brought forth the anticipation of World War III, with the US forced to curb the communist ideology by military force (Keylor 2011).

Not more than a decade after the Korean conflict, the USSR established their missiles in Cuba that has only just turned to communism. The threat of a nuclear holocaust was tangible, when the states came to a mutual agreement and withdrew their missiles from Cuba and Turkey, respectively (Keylor 2011). Nevertheless, the posture of Russia and the actions towards former Soviets have been still regarded in terms of the Cold War after the USSR has dissolved and the Cold War was Over.

The conflicts in Georgia and Ukraine were met with contempt, and talks about the new Cold War were raised but there is a major point of divergence that makes the analogy somewhat inconsistent. Russia’s actions in the third countries were not initially aimed at pecking the US or the EU; in addition, no actions from the latter were taken to prevent the conflicts (Harasymiw, 2010).

In his search for either a confirmation or contradiction to the idea of a new Cold War, Harasymiw (2010) discusses the missiles initiatives of both powers, emphasizing the “deep suspicion” that the Russian military still meet every US’s action (p. 12). The stagnated cold-war-style mentality of the Russian government, the author states, had resulted in a tension of relationships that was not reset until Dmitry Medvedev’s presidential term. President Obama and resident Medvedev have managed to overpower the reciprocal distrust – or so it seemed – replacing it with a civilized dialog that eased the flow of references to the Cold War (Harasymiw, 2010).

After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, the analysts and media commentators started to press the topic of the New Cold War, or the Cold War II (Kalb, 2015). The issues of President Putin’s autocracy, his motivations, and the relationships of Russia and the US were raised. Such discourse created a twofold picture: Russia had to be either appeased or countered. The world’s suspicion towards Russia’s actions in Syria might or might not be justified, although Prime Minister Medvedev advocates for Russia’s struggle for global security just as any other state would do ( Munich Security Conference , 2016).

The threats put before the US, EU, NATO, and the New World Order are multiple, the major one being terrorism – the one that cannot be tackled without cooperation and enhancement of security. The post-Cold War era implies thinking in post-Cold War terms. The images of Russia emerging a new Cold War do not make its policies and motivations more understandable; instead, they assume that Russia has not developed its strategies or arms since the USSR downfall – an assumption that can be disastrous if accepted as true.

Thus, thinking analogically and parallelizing the current situation with history does not account for the full picture. Instead of merely assuming a second Cold War, it is from the position of new policies and enhanced capabilities that the Russian annexations and suspicious actions in Syria should be regarded. But still, although analogizing the policies and implications with a historical period and legacy is hardly efficient, the question of what is it that Russia wants remains pressing.

Harasymiw, B. (2010). Russia, the United States, and the New Cold War. Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, 12 (2), 1-31.

Kalb, M. (2015). Imperial Gamble: Putin, Ukraine, and the New Cold War . Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.

Keylor, W. R. (2011). The Twentieth-century World and Beyond: An International History Since 1900 , 6 th ed. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Munich Security Conference . (2016). Web.

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IvyPanda. (2021, March 24). Cold War II: A Big Misunderstanding. https://ivypanda.com/essays/cold-war-ii-a-big-misunderstanding/

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Misunderstanding Essay

This essay sample on Misunderstanding Essay provides all necessary basic information on this matter, including the most common “for and against” arguments. Below are the introduction, body and conclusion parts of this essay.

“Not only the entire ability to think rests on language… but language is also the crux of the misunderstanding of reason with itself. ” This quote by Johann G. Hamann talks about language and how it can be misunderstood. What he means is if you don’t understand someone because you don’t speak that language how things are going to work out.

Everything will just be you listening to someone but you can’t comprehend what the person is saying. Just like in the two short stories “Wrong Channel” by Roberto Fernandez and “The True Story of Mr. and Mrs.

Wong” by Marilyn Chin. In the two stories both main characters are in disbelief of what is going on in the culture around them. In the short story “Wrong Channel” by Roberto Fernandez, the main character Barbarita is a Cuban immigrant in the United States.

This story portrays a miscommunication between cultures. In the beginning Barbarita was waiting nervously in her home. We know that she was nervous because the first line in the story says “Barbarita waited impatiently for her ride as beads of sweat dripped from her eyebrows into her third cup of cold syrupy espresso”.

Barbarita’s friend Mima had pulled up and told Barbarita to make sure she looks healthy for the doctor. Here we find out that Barbarita is living in Miami and going to the doctors to get her green card.

Proficient in: Behavior

“ Ok, let me say I’m extremely satisfy with the result while it was a last minute thing. I really enjoy the effort put in. ”

At the doctor’s office Barbarita was more nervous than ever she knocked over the reader’s digest and bibles off the table in the office. Before entering the exam room we friend out that not only is Mima a friend but also an interrupter for Barbarita.

Mr And Mrs Wong

When the doctor entered the room he wanted to know if Barbarita had ever had TB (Tuberculosis), but because of the accent in America, Mima had misunderstood the doctor causing Barbarita to be confused. Mima thought the doctor asked if she had a TV which is funny because no matter the language it is easy to misunderstand because they sound the same. Barbarita did not understand why the doctor wanted to know if she had a TV, and why it mattered to get her green card. Mima says to Barbarita “How many times did I tell you you needed to buy one?

Don’t you know, Barbarita? This is America”. This story gave a lot of insight about how easy it is to misunderstand someone. It could be just the way it was said or the lack of knowledge about different cultures. In the Short Story “The True Story of Mr. and Mrs. Wong” by Marilyn Chin, Mr. Wong is a very wealthy Chinese man and only wants one thing to have a son. Mr. Wong and his Wife have four daughters but in Chinese culture it is socially acceptable to have a son, who will carry on the family name.

We found out in the story that Mr. Wong’s wife cannot bear him a son. When he found this out he was very angry and yelled “What do you get from a turtle’s rotten womb but rotten turtle eggs? ” In this quote he is comparing his wife to a rotten turtle because she is not able to produce what he wants. Mr. Wong gets fed up and quickly marries off three of his daughters, which all go to guys with very decent jobs. The other daughter ran off to Hollywood, she just needed to get away from it all and start a new life there. Mr.

Wong is in disbelief about his wife so he decides to get a divorce. An irony in the story is that the wife ends up being a beautician for the dead, but it is ironic because she was basically dead to her husband. As the story continues Mr. Wong finds a new bride and although she could not conceive at first it was okay. After surgery on her womb to remove polyps she was able to give Mr. Wong three boys. In the end it was funny that he got his three boys but none of them carried on his family business but all became tax accountants. Mr.

Wong just wanted to fit in and be like his family before him, to have someone who would carry on your name and be proud of it. Mr. Wong couldn’t believe how difficult it was to have a son and blamed his wife for their problems. In these two stories there are many similarities but also a deal of differences. One similarity is both stories are written by a third person narrative. Third person narrative allows us as readers to get a sense of feeling and thought to what the characters are going through. Unlike first person neither the narrator nor the character is in the story.

Another similarity between the stories is that both portray a feeling a confusing. In the first story the confusion is between TV and TB and it’s important because without that information she doesn’t get a green card. In the other story even though his confusion may not be as noticeable as the other story it is still there. Mr. Wong doesn’t know why his wife couldn’t bear him a son, he thought she was dirty and couldn’t take it anymore. He had a find another woman and hope she could give him a son and he would learn the family business but things didn’t go as planned.

Some differences from bother stories are that they are talking about two different cultures Cuban and Chinese. Chinese believe that the things they do in life should stay within the family and that’s why families needed to bear a son. In the Cuban society it didn’t matter what sex you were but how well you learned. The two main characters in both stories are very different from each other. Barbarita is a Cuban lady who just wants to get her green card and be happy in the states. She is very nervous and not too sure about her surroundings.

Now Mr. Wong on the other hand he is very angry and delirious. Wants one thing but can’t just seem to get it all together. Each story has its own special meaning and understanding about different cultures. From these two stories we can see how language ties in to culture. If you don’t know something it could be misunderstood. Even though these stories may not be so similar they both deal with two separate cultures. If in one culture things are done a certain way, it might be looked at differently by someone from another culture.

Being able to understand a culture and finding ways to deal with those surroundings are difficult. This doesn’t mean that Mr. Wong in the second story is wrong for wanting a son. This is part of his culture where sons are just worth more to the Chinese. Barbarita can’t understand why someone needs a TV to be an American but she doesn’t realize TV isn’t what the doctor meant. Each culture can be looked at in different ways but in the end it’s about doing what’s best for you. Being able to learn about your surroundings and making choices from them.

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In light of COVID-19 (and all of our heightened stress levels), it’s crucial to take steps to avoid miscommunication when working as part of a virtual team. How do you avoid sending a passive aggressive Slack (“let’s chat.”) or email (“just bumping this up in your inbox!”)? How do you hit the right tone over text? The author offers ten tactical tips for staying connected and remaining supportive of your team, even when you’re not in the same location.

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As COVID-19 spreads across the world, more and more of us are starting to work from home. In light of this global shift (and all of our heightened stress levels), it’s crucial to take steps to avoid miscommunication when working as part of a virtual team.

• Liz Fosslien is the coauthor and illustrator of the WSJ bestseller No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotion at Work  and Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay . She is on the leadership team of Atlassian’s Team Anywhere, where she helps distributed teams advance how they collaborate. Liz regularly leads workshops for leaders; her clients include Google, Paramount, and the U.S. Air Force. Liz’s writing and work have been featured by TED, The Economist, Good Morning America, the New York Times, and NPR. lizandmollie
• Mollie West Duffy is the coauthor of the WSJ bestseller No Hard Feelings: The Secret Power of Embracing Emotion at Work and Big Feelings: How to Be Okay When Things Are Not Okay . She is the head of learning and development at Lattice, and was an organizational design lead at global innovation firm IDEO. She has worked with companies of all sizes on organizational development, leadership development, and workplace culture. lizandmollie

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• <em>The Idea of You</em> Is About the Ultimate Middle-Aged-Lady Fantasy: Being Noticed

The Idea of You Is About the Ultimate Middle-Aged-Lady Fantasy: Being Noticed

Warning:  This post contains spoilers for  The Idea of You.

These are grim days for romance. Marriage is down. Engagements are down. People don't seem to be into dating apps anymore. Even sex is down. The most successful movie last year ( Barbie ) was about the guy not getting the girl. Where does this leave romantic comedies, that great engine of fantasy that has launched a 100,000 Hinge profiles? How will people find each other without moony love stories to dream about?

Romance is not taking this situation lying down. (Sorry.) Just as movies about lone superheroes have morphed into movies about galaxies of superheroes, and movies about a scary monster have transmogrified into a Godzilla x Kong -style smackdown, romantic comedies have had to amp up the fantasy, and not just by having Ryan Gosling play a lover and a fighter in The Fall Guy . They've gone so far as to borrow a trick from their disreputable cousins in porn, and smash some deep taboos.

Read More: The Real Inspiration Between the Buzzy Boy Band Rom-Com The Idea of You

And I'm not just talking about the recent spate of films exploring love stories between older women and younger men. These have come in various forms, from the darkly funny May December to the erotic thriller and very French Last Summer . Neither of those movies is long on wish fulfillment, which is kind of like having a superhero movie where people solve interplanetary crises by negotiating.

No, the really deep taboo-busting is being done by The Idea of You , which is being heavily sold as an age-gap romance but is actually so much more than that. It really belongs in the genre of middle-aged-lady fantasy (MALF) movies. If there were a Comic-Con for slightly overwhelmed mid-career women—a Discontentment-Con, if you will— The Idea of You would have a main-stage panel. MALF is the genre that asks: if Thor can have a hammer that always comes back and a bunch of cool superhero friends and a fulfilling job saving the universe, can't a 40-year-old woman get everything she wants in a movie too? And The Idea of You answers that if she is Solène Marchand, the coolest single mom in all of the Western seaboard, she can and does.

Solène is an art dealer who represents female artists and lives in a lovely but not too flashy craftsman cottage with a fireplace and a piano in supernatural harmony with her teenage daughter Izzy. She has a cool but modest career that does not look as boring or cutthroat as art-dealing actually is, and a cluster of extremely loyal and supportive friends. She has mastered the feminine arts of cooking and wearing lingerie but in a human and relatable way; neither her fridge nor her boobs are holding up as she had hoped they might.

Seven minutes into the movie we meet the middle-aged lady's nemesis, her ex, who does something vaguely lucrative, lives somewhere overly rectangular, and sleeps with someone youngish. Despite apparently having everything a person could want, he lets his ex-wife and daughter down—again! Solène saves the day, abandoning her plans to go camping alone, of which she is totally capable, and volunteering to take her daughter and two friends to Coachella, like any totally chill hip hero mom would.

Read More: The Power of Bryce Dallas Howard's Body in Argylle

Sometimes people who consistently put themselves last, the movie seems to say, who put their hopes and dreams on hold for their families, or use their considerable talents in the service of the greater good, can emerge on top. So it is when Solène, through an adorable misunderstanding of music-festival signage, stumbles into the trailer of a boy-band member about a decade and half her junior and insists on using his bathroom. Instead of calling security, the young demigod immediately sees something in our heroine that nobody else has. He then does what all young men do when they have an older woman in their sights: he buys all the art in her gallery! He relishes her homemade sandwiches! Instead of requests for nudes, he texts her an invitation to tour Europe with him!

In one scene, Solène drives through a crowd of paparazzi and phone-wielding teens with Hayes Campbell, the young star, hiding in the reclined seat next to her. Nobody even notices her. In case the viewer misses it, the movie keeps reminding us: this is a woman whom nobody sees, except the star of the hottest boy band in the world. Nobody can take their eyes off him, and he can't take his eyes—or his hands, or several other body parts—off her.

This is the acme of the true fantasy—not attracting a young man with chiseled cheekbones, perfect teeth, and the ability to wear a thick cardigan on a very hot day without even a bead of sweat—but actually being noticed. When the couple inevitably gets photographed together, everyone has to recalibrate who Solène really is. Some are jealous, some are appalled. (The ever-game Anne Hathaway gets to play the woman who endures this judgment-fest—a role that is probably not much of a stretch.) Most discomfited of all is her slimy ex, now left by his young lover and with nothing but his glassy lair to snuggle up in at night.

While the movie is crystal clear that Solène is need of nothing, she does in the end get everything. Her superpowers—authenticity, talent, loyalty, kindness—allow her to wreak revenge on her foe and emerge from her period of struggle having it all and more—an unleashed libido, a booming career, the admiration of her child, and lots and lots of steamy sex with the world's most desired man. Who's also, the viewer is informed, a feminist.

Of course, the duo hit some age- and fame- and schedule- and mean-girl-related roadblocks and have to go their separate ways for a while. Years later, however, they meet again, and the viewer can tell they have both matured; she no longer has bangs and he has a solo career. Maybe this time it will work. Good things, the movie notes, come with age. Or so a 40-plus-year-old woman can dream.

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Yes, People Still Buy Books

How a viral post got some key statistics wrong..

This essay was adapted from Lincoln Michel’s newsletter Counter Craft.  Subscribe here.

Last week the article “ No One Buys Books ,” by Elle Griffin, went viral, topping Substack categories and being shared widely on social media. It’s easy to understand why. Publishing is an opaque industry, and Griffin’s piece—which collects quotes and statistics from the 2022 Justice Department suit against Penguin Random House, in which the government successfully blocked PRH’s $2.2 billion purchase of Simon & Schuster—is filled with shocking claims. Over 90 percent of books sell fewer than 1,000 copies; 50 percent of books sell fewer than 12 copies. The article paints a nearly apocalyptic portrait of traditional publishing, in which nothing works, few make money, nobody reads, and the whole industry might go poof at any moment. This vision is appealing to many people, including writers who (fairly or unfairly) feel stymied by the industry, popularists who think reading itself is a snobby hobby, and tech types who mock “paywalled dead trees.” The only problem is, the picture isn’t true.

Let me say first that Griffin does an admirable job collecting these quotes, and much of the overall thrust is correct: Most people don’t buy books, sales for most titles are lower than many think, and big publishing works on a blockbuster model where a few hits—plus perennial backlist sellers—comprise the bulk of sales. It’s also true that books don’t occupy as central a place in the culture as they did before film, streaming TV, video games, and social media fragmented culture. (That ship sailed many decades ago, however.)

Still, many of the statistics here are wrong or misleading in part because they were intended to be. PRH’s legal strategy was to present publishing as an imperiled, dying industry beset on all sides by threats like Amazon—a characterization intended to convince the court that a merger was necessary for publishing’s survival. There may be truth to that idea, and I’m not saying any of the quotes are  lies .   I’m saying the quotes and statistics are tailored toward a specific narrative in the context of a legal battle. So, read them with a $2.2 billion–sized grain of salt.

Before we dive into numbers, though, let’s step back and look at the biggest question: Do people buy books?

Americans Buy Over 1 Billion Books a Year

How many books are sold in the United States? The only reliable tracker we have is Circana BookScan , which logs point of sale—i.e., customer purchases at stores, websites, etc.—for most of the print market. BookScan counted 767 million print sales in 2023. It collects this data directly from reporting bookstores, chains, and online retailers that combine for the majority of the market. BookScan claims to cover 85 percent of print sales, although many in publishing think the percentage is smaller. Many books sold at book festivals or in-person at readings are not reported to BookScan, for example, nor are library sales. (Almost every author will tell you that their royalty reports show notably more sales than BookScan captures, sometimes by  orders of magnitude .)

Still, I’ll be conservative and assume that 85 percent is the correct figure. This means that close to 900 million  print  books are sold to customers each year. Add in e-books  and the quickly growing audiobook market, and the total number of new books sold is over 1 billion. Again, this is a conservative estimate. And it does not include used book sales or library purchases. Americans do buy books.

Is 1-billion-plus a lot of books? This depends on your point of view. For comparison’s sake, there  were 825 million movie tickets sold in the U.S. and Canada in 2023. So, more books are purchased than movie tickets, two comparable entertainment options in terms of price. On the other hand, that’s “new movies in theaters” vs. “ all  books available for sale from throughout history.” Movies are vastly more expensive to make, so far fewer movies are released each year than books are published. Individual movies are watched far more than most individual books are read.

Whether or not this “1 billion books” number is big, it’s fairly stable . Print book sales have not been decimated by digital sales/streaming in the way of so many other industries . Despite the introduction of e-books, various attempts at “Netflix for Books” services such as Oyster and Scribd , and endless cries about the death of publishing … print sales have increased in recent years, before even accounting for the millions of e-books sold and the audiobook market. Publishing is an industry with plenty of problems—believe me, I know—but there’s no reason to think it’s on its deathbed.

Why It’s So Easy to Mislead With Book Statistics

In the world of lies, damned lies, and statistics, book stats are especially easy to manipulate. I’ve already mentioned that BookScan doesn’t track all print purchases and that the stats typically don’t include e-books or audiobooks. But there are lots of ways—if, say, you are trying to persuade a judge to allow a big corporate merger—to manipulate these numbers to mislead:

Many of the quotes from the trial seem to reference  calendar year  sales—meaning they include books that have been out for only a week or a month—instead of a reasonable time frame like two years, much less lifetime sales.

Overall book sale stats apply to all books from throughout history that are still in publication. A bestseller from 1924 or 1824 might sell only 10 copies in calendar year 2024, but it might have reached 1 million in lifetime sales.

BookScan tracks by ISBNs , meaning what most people think of as a single book—e.g., one novel—actually counts as multiple books. My novel  The Body Scout   came out in four formats with different ISBNs, and so it counts as four separate books: hardcover, paperback, e-book, and audiobook. The same is true for almost every book published.

Certain types of books, like some academic texts, are barely sold in the general marketplace at all, even if they have an ISBN.

“Books” as a category includes everything from novels and memoirs to crossword puzzle collections and adult coloring books.

“Publishers” includes everything from big corporate publishers to small presses to academic presses that don’t really sell in bookstores to serious self-published authors to amateur self-published authors who may have no expectations at all of sales but just want to put a collection of cat poems out for their grandkids.

I hope you can see where I’m going with this. What the average Big 5–published book sells in one calendar year is a completely different number from what it sells over a lifetime. That number is completely different from the average book sales of all publishers, from micropresses to big corporate publishers. And that number would be completely different from the average sale of books, including the millions of self-published books.

And within any of those numbers, the statistics vary wildly by type of book. Think about movies again. When people talk about movie revenue, they’re probably restricting themselves to feature films released in theaters or movies streaming on big platforms like Netflix. (The closemouthed way the latter handles its data has already famously mucked up movie stats.) But “books” encompass everything from niche academic monographs and Sudoku puzzle collections to bestselling novels and memoirs. It would be as if “movie” statistics included educational videos, online porn streaming, and TikToks.

My point isn’t that there’s anything bad about self-published cat poems, crossword puzzles, TikToks, or anything like that. My point is that “average book sales” tell you almost nothing about, say, how well the average novel published by a big press, and widely available in bookstores, sells. (To be fair, this also means that the billion-plus number above includes lots of things we wouldn’t normally think of as books.) I went into greater depth about  book stats here .

Understanding How Books Earn Money

There’s also a lot of confusion in book publishing because the economics are both complicated and obscured. Confusion is common. I’ll look at just one example from the original article, because it illustrates two common misunderstandings:

Books don’t make money If I look at the top 10 percent of books … that 10 percent level gets you to about 300,000 copies sold in that year. And if you told me I’m definitely going to sell 300,000 copies in a year, I would spend many millions of dollars to get that book. —Madeline McIntosh, CEO, Penguin Random House US Publishing houses pay millions of dollars for a book that sells only 300,000 copies??? Well, because books don’t sell a lot of copies, they don’t make a lot of money. … According to [consultant Nicholas] Hill, 85 percent of the books with advances of $250,000 and up never earn out their advance.

McIntosh said 300,000 copies “in a year” rather than in lifetime sales, so we are talking calendar-year sales, not lifetime sales. (See above.) A book that sold “only” 300,000 in one year is going to sell many more copies in other years. It has a good chance of being a perennial backlist seller, even. That is the goal of any publisher, since they sell with almost no overhead or marketing costs. Such a book would certainly make many, many millions for a publisher. What company wouldn’t pay millions if they were “definitely going” to make even more millions back? Business 101.

I think the above quote also might give the impression that books “don’t make money” when they don’t earn out advances. This is a common misconception. A book can be profitable for a publisher well before the author earns out the advance. (If you don’t know, an advance is money paid upfront to an author. Authors don’t earn royalties until a publisher has made back that advance money out of the author’s per-sale share.)

The actual math of bookselling is complicated since royalty rates vary by format, price points can fluctuate, and big publishers have different distribution deals from small ones. That said, I’ll do a bit of simplistic napkin math to explain.

Let’s say the average book sells for $20. Of that, about half goes to the retailer and distributor and the other half to the publisher. Of the publisher’s $10, about $1 goes to pay back the advance—or to royalties when the book “earns out.” (Again, I’m simplifying. Standard royalty rates are between 7.5 percent and 25 percent, depending on format.) So, if a book sells 1 million copies, then the publisher makes $10 million, with $1 million going toward earning out the author’s advance. If the publisher paid an advance of $3 million, the author hasn’t earned out … but the publisher still made $7 million in revenue.

That’s not profit. Publishers have expenses to pay back, including the costs of printing the book and marketing. Economies of scale come in here. But you can see how books can be profitable well before advances are earned out. Indeed, here’s another quote from Griffin’s article, from Simon & Schuster CEO Jonathan Karp, that supports that: “About half of the books we publish make money, and a much lower percentage of them earn back the advance we pay.” Along these lines, it’s a myth that a book that hasn’t earned out is a failure. It’s even possible to have a long and lucrative career without ever earning out.

You might think that only 50 percent of books making money for the publisher is a bad thing, but most comparable industries operate this way. In entertainment, a few big winners have always funded the rest.

What Does Your Average Novel Sell?

I assume most people reading both Griffin’s article and this one don’t care about the sales of adult coloring books and pocket copies of the Constitution and so on. What they’re interested in are the sales of what most people think of when they hear the word books : novels, biographies, essay collections, story collections, and the like. So, cutting through the noise, how do those sell?

Sadly, you can’t really say. The answer depends on the type and genre of book and the type of publisher. Someone from a prestige Big 5 imprint whose books are often award contenders and bestsellers once told me any book that sold  fewer  than 25,000 in print was a failure for the publisher. On the other hand, many literary fiction writers have told me that anything  more  than 5,000 sales is a success. So, some small-press editors might be happy with 1,000 sales.

What I can say is that no book you’re likely to have heard of is selling only 12 copies or anything near that. Most new books in bookstores are selling, at a minimum, hundreds of copies and most of the time thousands. The popular ones are selling tens of thousands, and the breakout hits are selling hundreds of thousands or even millions.

I would add here that it’s not true that only movie star memoirs and James Patterson–type commercial thrillers are breakout hits. The NYT bestseller list often includes award winners, and so-called literary fiction titles like The Goldfinch and All the Light We Cannot See can sell in the millions. And many authors earn a living —or, if not a living, then a significant chunk of a living—from their books without ever becoming as famous as Stephen King or Danielle Steel.

Again, I’m not saying all is great in publishing land. Certainly, I wish that the novels I love were selling millions instead of thousands of copies. But I imagine few are shocked that books in 2024 do not occupy the place in the culture they did 100 years ago, before video games, cellphones, social media, streaming TV, and the like dominated our time.

One telling summary  from Griffin’s article was this:

Penguin Random House US has guidelines for who gets what advance: Category 1: Lead titles with a sales goal of 75,000 units and up Advance: $500,000 and up Category 2: Titles with a sales goal of 25,000–75,000 units Advance: $150,000–$500,000 Category 3: Titles with a sales goal of 10,000–25,000 units Advance: $50,000–$150,000 Category 4: Titles with a sales goal of 5,000 to 10,000 units Advance: $50,000 or less

This seems like a fair look at the relationship between advances and big publishers’ expectations . The lowest sales target is in the thousands. Obviously, many books will fail to hit their targets, though typically not by 4,988 copies. On the other end, anything selling more than 75,000 is a rare hit. If you’re on a big publisher, you are likely to sell a few thousand copies. If you’re lucky, tens of thousands. If you’re exceptionally lucky, hundreds of thousands or millions.

Adding in E-book and Audio Numbers

The above are, I think, just print sales. E-book and audio sales are trickier to handle because of subscription services and because prices vary wildly for individual titles.  The Body Scout —like most novels—has routinely been put on Kindle Daily Deals and the like, selling for $1.99–$3.99 for limited periods of time. Industry professionals have told me that for most literary fiction titles, e-book sales are about half of print sales. But for some genres, especially science fiction and fantasy, e-book sales can easily exceed print sales. (For what it’s worth, I just looked up the sales of  The Body Scout , and it’s almost exactly 50 percent hardcover/paperback and 50 percent e-book/audio.)

Selling and Reading Are Different Things

But it’s good to remember that everything talked about here is  sales  of new books, a category that is not the same as  reading . Many people purchase used books or check out books from the library or borrow books from friends. And that’s not even getting into reading magazines, Substacks, and more. (Of course, people also buy lots of books they never read …)

There’s a lot I think publishers could change, including focusing on big advance books and celebrity authors—Griffin is quite right that those acquisitions often go bust, especially with social media celebrities. Instagram and TikTok followers rarely translate to book sales. And books are certainly not at the center of culture in the way they were before TV and social media and all the rest.

Still, books endure. Publishing is still chugging along, not just in the Big 5 publishers—which account for most of these stats—but also in indie and small presses, where much of the best writing is published. If you want to keep the books coming, well, keep buying them and/or checking them out at your local library.

‘Education has definitely been impacted’: Hoax bomb threats plague Nebo school after ‘furry’ outrage

The threats started april 19, two days after video of mt. nebo middle schoolers protesting “furries” began spreading in conservative social media circles..

(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Nebo School District spokesperson Seth Sorensen speaks during a news conference at the Payson Police Department to address recent hoax bomb threats targeting Mt. Nebo Middle School in Payson on Wednesday, May 1, 2024.

In the two weeks since video of a student-led “furry” protest at Mt. Nebo Middle School spread in conservative social media circles , the school has received multiple hoax bomb threats that officials believe are tied to viral “furry outrage” stoked by the posts.

“Students’ education has definitely been impacted,” said Nebo School District spokesperson Seth Sorenson during a joint news conference Wednesday with Payson police. “However, we’re committed as a district to maintain a stable situation for all of our students.”

That’s why district officials announced Wednesday that they intend to keep the school open for the remainder of the academic year, despite the significant learning disruptions.

The bogus threats started April 19, two days after video depicting Mt. Nebo middle schoolers walking out of school began to circulate on far-right social media, with posts claiming the students were protesting because the district was allowing student “furries” to “terrorize” other students.

“Students claim that the furries bite them, bark at them, and pounce on them without repercussion,” one post read from Libs of TikTok , an account on X that shares anti-LGBTQ posts and other clips geared at generating right-wing outrage. “However, if they defend themselves in any way, they get in trouble.”

Sorenson asserted those claims were false, explaining that the student protest seemed to be organized after a message the school sent to families was misinterpreted. Sorenson has also said students at the middle school are not wearing full-body animal costumes to class, as “furries” — part of a subculture of people who sometimes dress up like animal characters but act like humans — are known to do.

(Bethany Baker | The Salt Lake Tribune) Mt. Nebo Middle School in Payson on Thursday, April 18, 2024.

Two other subsequent hoax threats came to the school on April 23 and April 30, police said Wednesday. The Payson Police Department canvased the school with bomb detection dogs but found no devices or other materials.

After the April 30 threat was cleared, school officials allowed families to pick up their children early from Mt. Nebo. About 70% of students were picked up early that day, Sorenson said.

Payson police alongside federal law enforcement continue to investigate the hoax threats but have not yet identified who may be behind them.

“If we identify suspects, they will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Payson police Sgt. Scott Hall said Wednesday.

That could include charging perpetrators with a second-degree felony after HB14 passed during this year’s legislative session, making falsely reporting an emergency at school a felony. If the perpetrator is found to be a public school student, the law mandates that they be suspended or expelled.

The district in the meantime has employed additional counseling resources for students who may be experiencing increased anxiety due to the threats, Sorenson said. More adult supervisors are also patrolling the school’s hallways, and extra police will remain on campus for the rest of the school year.

“Student safety is our top priority,” Sorenson said. “We want students to be safe and secure. And we want parents to feel confident sending their students to our schools, knowing that they’re going to be safe and protected.”

What led to the ‘furry’ protest, outrage

The message that Sorenson believes led to the April 17 student protest came after a group of students had been targeting another group of students at the school, saying things “that were overheard by others that the administration felt were inappropriate and shouldn’t be said,” Sorenson has said.

The group of students being targeted, he said, sometimes come to school wearing headbands “that may have ears on them.” He said he doesn’t think the targeted students necessarily refer to themselves as “furries.”

In one specific instance, the targeted students “were sitting in a corner of the lunchroom, eating as a group of friends” when others began calling them names and throwing food at them “because they were dressed differently,” Sorenson told The Salt Lake Tribune.

After word of the altercation spread, the initial message sent to families stated, “We expect ALL students to be respectful towards each other while we are here at school.”

“We hope you will treat others how you would like to be treated,” the message stated. “Outstanding behavior might demonstrate curiosity, understanding, patience and tolerance.”

The message also reiterated the school’s dress code policy as well as the school’s policy against written, verbal, or physical acts that stand to threaten, humiliate or abuse others.

But Sorenson said he thinks some parents misinterpreted the note, incorrectly taking it as a message that the school was “taking the side of a single group, saying, ‘We want you to be kind to this group, but they don’t have to be kind to anyone else.’”

“Nobody was taking the side of one group or another,” he said. “What we were saying is everyone needs to treat everyone else with respect.”

A few days later, the school sent another message to parents, trying to clarify its original note.

“We have had several parents reach out to us over the past few days, regarding rumors that are being spread about behaviors of a small group of students at our school,” the message read. “We hoped our efforts to clarify misconceptions would be sufficient, but it seems we still have some misunderstandings.”

The note concluded with an acknowledgement of rumored plans of the April 17 walkout protest.

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With Inflation This High, Nobody Knows What a Dollar Is Worth

Strong reactions to rising prices and misunderstandings about the value of money are rampant, our columnist says.

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By Jeff Sommer

Jeff Sommer writes Strategies , a weekly column on markets, finance and the economy.

Rising prices have made people grumpy. They have depressed consumer confidence , despite a growing economy and low unemployment.

But exactly how inflation is hurting, helping and confusing people is hard to understand. Everyone knows that the cost of living has increased. Yet unless you’re constantly pulling out a calculator, you’re unlikely to know whether your wages are keeping up with inflation, whether the stock market has actually hit a real peak or whether a lottery jackpot is as sweet as the marketers claim.

There’s a fancy name for the common human failure to see past the gaudy prices largely created by inflation. This widespread inability to recognize what money is really worth is known as money illusion.

Irving Fisher, a Yale economist, wrote a book about it nearly a century ago. John Maynard Keynes , the British economist, popularized the idea. Behavioral economists have studied it extensively. But their insights tend to be forgotten when prices are fairly stable, as they were in the United States until three years ago.

When inflation increases annually at 2 percent or so, who really cares about it? You can function well without thinking about the slowly eroding value of your money — although old-timers notice it because even at a 2 percent annual inflation rate, prices double every 36 years.

But now that we’ve been living with high inflation for a while, everyone is prone to money illusion, to one extent or another.

Consider that a March 2021 dollar is worth less than 85 cents today, according to the government’s Consumer Inflation Index calculator . When I keep that number in my head, the dollars in my bank account look especially unimpressive. (And I’ve been working full-time since the summer of 1977. The calculator says that every dollar I earned in my first job is worth only 19 cents in 2024 money. Yikes!)

Of course, everyone knows by now that the purchasing power of the dollar has dropped. When the price of products you see every day has gone up — a gallon of gasoline, a loaf of bread, a cup of coffee — you know prices have risen.

Even so, it’s easy to slip back into thinking a dollar is simply worth a dollar, and that it always has been.

Stocks and the Lottery

Certain aspects of inflation’s toll on the markets are extensively chronicled — yet, I think, the profound effects of inflation on stocks and bonds are still widely underestimated.

First, a few things about inflation’s costs are clear. Because the Federal Reserve has been fighting inflation, short-term rates are high. And several consecutive months of bad inflation readings have made it unlikely that the Fed will cut rates soon. In the bond market, which responds to the Fed’s signals and to traders’ judgments about inflation and economic growth, yields have surged. As a result of all this, a range of consumer credit rates steepened. These include mortgages, credit cards and personal loans.

In addition, the dawning realization this month that the Fed is in no rush to lower interest rates stalled the stock market.

I wrote about a less well-known aspect of inflation recently. The frequent exuberant references to new peaks in the S&P 500 during the recent bull rally didn’t take rising consumer prices into account. (They used what economists call nominal prices, not real ones.) On an inflation-adjusted basis, the stock market only in March approached a new peak for the first time in years. I relied on an analysis by Robert Shiller, a Yale economist, who has long used inflation-adjusted data to pierce the veil of money illusion. Because of setbacks in the past few weeks — high inflation and a faltering stock market — the market has fallen below peak levels in real terms.

Using nominal returns in an inflationary era can lead you to the erroneous conclusion that market is generating phenomenal returns.

Here’s another product of money illusion, one that state governments are exploiting relentlessly: lottery jackpots. As I wrote in March, a spate of recent huge jackpots have been artificially pumped up by questionable marketing practices, high interest rates and inflation.

When used by skilled marketers, money illusion can make unwary humans so excited that they will pour hard-earned money into chimeras, like lotteries and frothy stock markets.

Unhappy Workers

The old refrain, that the rent is too damn high, is resonating now. Steep housing costs are embedded in government indexes and account for a substantial part of recent official inflation increases.

Wages are another nagging problem. Numerous surveys show that many working people believe their wages haven’t kept up with the cost of living. Whether they actually have kept up is debatable. The official data on average wages is volatile and difficult to interpret.

Meticulous research by the economists David Autor, Annie McGrew and Arindrajit Dube shows that for lower-income people, real wages have risen, erasing nearly 40 percent of the longstanding wage gap between richer and poorer workers in the United States.

Even so, because inflation in essentials like food, housing and transportation stresses lower-income people more acutely than the rich, it’s not clear that those wage increases are well appreciated.

In fact, research by Stefanie Stantcheva, a scholar at Harvard and the Brookings Institution, building on earlier work by Professor Shiller, finds that it’s not.

People tend to blame the government for the pain of inflation, and to give themselves credit for raises they have received — even while feeling angry that those raises don’t seem to be keeping up with the cost of living.

That’s a core issue when inflation is high. “Money Illusion,” a classic 1997 paper by the economists Eldar Shafir and Peter Diamond and the psychologist Amos Tversky, found that in periods of high inflation, employers can get away with giving workers raises that amount to substantial wage cuts on an inflation-adjusted basis.

Say inflation is rising at a 4 percent annual rate, and you get a 2 percent raise. You’ve just received a real wage cut. If there’s no inflation, and your wage is cut by 1 percent, you’ve also gotten a wage cut — but you’ve lost less money than in the case of high inflation. What’s odd is that workers tend to view the bigger real wage cuts as fairer.

This makes sense, the authors say, when you factor in money illusion.

Where We Are Now

At the moment, consumer sentiment surveys are skewing lower than they have in periods that were similar in economic growth and employment. Neale Mahoney and Ryan Cummings , two economists at Stanford, think inflation, and lingering dissatisfaction with price levels, may well be the cause.

Looking back at past periods of high inflation, they have done some rough calculations that show that the negative effects of inflation on consumer sentiment erode 50 percent each year. In other words, they have a half life of about one year.

Professor Mahoney updated the research at my request. In the three years through March, prices rose 17.9 percent. According to his model — and, crucially, assuming the rate of inflation drops immediately to the Fed’s forecast of 2.5 percent annually — there would be an eight percentage point increase in consumer sentiment by November. There happens to be a national election then.

Mr. Mahoney and Mr. Cummings both served in the Biden administration. If they are right — and, if inflation really drops quickly and stays low — the improvement in the national mood could tilt the outcome of the election.

But inflation has defied economists’ prediction efforts over the past few years. I make no assumptions.

Certainly, I hope inflation will fall and it will be safe to live an ordinary life without thinking about money illusion. But it will take a long while for me to unsee the shrinking dollar.

An earlier version of this article misspelled the surname of one of the economists who conducted research on wage trends. She is Annie McGrew, not McGraw.

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Jeff Sommer writes Strategies , a weekly column on markets, finance and the economy. More about Jeff Sommer