My nephew Harsha is a remarkable boy. He is just 12 years old but has figured out an element that is vital to communicating: tone.
The left, more logical, side of the brain processes content, experts say, but the right, more instinctive side processes tone. Content is important, but tone perhaps more so.
Think about it. Tone is often the reason people misunderstand each other. Tone is why they can take unreasonable dislikes to each other.
It was her tone of voice, as much as what she said, that got Margaret Thatcher labelled the "Iron Lady".
It is because of their tone of voice, often, that we think of people as arrogant, flaky, humble, or funny.
If content is the architecture, tone is the interior decoration and fittings. When all else fails, when we are short on content, we can make do with tone.
This is a problem because tone is hard to teach. Some young people, such as Harsha, understand it intuitively, but an ear for tone isn't genetic or natural. It must be learnt, sometimes painfully.
Trying to teach my child this skill, I have told her that people hate bald statements, so whenever she refuses something, she should give an explanation, which shows a consideration for the other person's point of view. Children are taught to say, "No, thank you," but not to explain why. Explanations tell the other person that you take them seriously.
Example: I offered some children a plate of cut-up mangoes. Several said "no, thank you" but one boy added that he would go swimming soon, and needed an empty stomach, a more considerate response.
Thinking about the other person's point of view is particularly important in the online age, when so much of our communication is with people we have never met. Writing without a simple greeting may make for more efficient emails but unless the other person really knows you, it can come across as abrupt, even arrogant.
Etiquette works symbiotically with tone. Writing a one-line email works when you are conversing with the person on a regular basis, but appears rude when you are writing to someone with whom you haven't interacted in a long time.
Countries have tones, people have tones. Why do we think Americans are easy-going, and Germans are perfectionists, the Swiss precise and the Italians emotional? It all has to do with the way they speak more than what they actually say.
Tone is less vital in legal, scientific, and medical communication. When you present a scientific paper or a legal case, content counts. You can choose the most optimistic tone, but it will not make a culpable suspect less guilty. Tone hardly matters when you are presenting an academic paper on cancer, but it is everything when you are telling a family that a loved one has cancer.
Most people who gravitate towards marketing or sales naturally have a good sense of tone. It goes hand-in-hand with people skills.
But in professions that presume to value content, logic, and analysis, tone can fall by the wayside. Law, engineering, and any profession that has to do with numbers come to mind.
Another area where tone becomes important is assertiveness. It takes a long time to figure out how to be assertive without being rude.
As a parent, I find that I have to teach my children three kinds of assertiveness. When speaking to a parent or anyone to whom they are very close, such as a grandparent, tone matters little. They can express themselves freely and emotionally.
When they need to assert themselves against other individuals such as a teacher or an elder, a flat tone is key because it delivers the message without seeming to be impertinent.
The third situation is with peers, when they should make their position clear. My brother once told me that his erstwhile boss had taught him an invaluable lesson: the entire office should always know exactly what he felt about any given project. There should be no confusion. This is useful advice when I deal with the household staff who lubricate my life. If I tell them how I feel, it makes life easier for everyone.
As a mother, I tell my daughters that they can be tone-deaf with their peers, their friends. They need to maintain a flat tone with their grandparents. And with me, their parent, tone is everything. They may tell me that they don't care, but the way they say it tells me that they do care indeed. And I can hear that.
Shoba Narayan is the author of Return to India: a memoir.
SPECS
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KILLING OF QASSEM SULEIMANI
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
COMPANY PROFILE
● Company: Bidzi
● Started: 2024
● Founders: Akshay Dosaj and Asif Rashid
● Based: Dubai, UAE
● Industry: M&A
● Funding size: Bootstrapped
● No of employees: Nine
Monster
Directed by: Anthony Mandler
Starring: Kelvin Harrison Jr., John David Washington
3/5
The stats
Ship name: MSC Bellissima
Ship class: Meraviglia Class
Delivery date: February 27, 2019
Gross tonnage: 171,598 GT
Passenger capacity: 5,686
Crew members: 1,536
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The%20Roundup
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Pharaoh's curse
British aristocrat Lord Carnarvon, who funded the expedition to find the Tutankhamun tomb, died in a Cairo hotel four months after the crypt was opened.
He had been in poor health for many years after a car crash, and a mosquito bite made worse by a shaving cut led to blood poisoning and pneumonia.
Reports at the time said Lord Carnarvon suffered from “pain as the inflammation affected the nasal passages and eyes”.
Decades later, scientists contended he had died of aspergillosis after inhaling spores of the fungus aspergillus in the tomb, which can lie dormant for months. The fact several others who entered were also found dead withiin a short time led to the myth of the curse.
Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
The specs
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MATCH INFO
Schalke 0
Werder Bremen 1 (Bittencourt 32')
Man of the match Leonardo Bittencourt (Werder Bremen)
RESULTS
6.30pm: Al Maktoum Challenge Round-1 Group 1 (PA) Dh119,373 (Dirt) 1,600m
Winner: Brraq, Adrie de Vries (jockey), Jean-Claude Pecout (trainer)
7.05pm: Handicap (TB) Dh102,500 (D) 1,200m
Winner: Taamol, Connor Beasley, Ali Rashid Al Raihe.
7.40pm: Handicap (TB) Dh105,000 (Turf) 1,800m
Winner: Eqtiraan, Connor Beasley, Ali Rashid Al Raihe.
8.15pm: UAE 1000 Guineas Trial (TB) Dh183,650 (D) 1,400m
Winner: Soft Whisper, Pat Cosgrave, Saeed bin Suroor.
9.50pm: Handicap (TB) Dh105,000 (D) 1,600m
Winner: Hypothetical, Mickael Barzalona, Salem bin Ghadayer.
9.25pm: Handicap (TB) Dh95,000 (T) 1,000m
Winner: Etisalat, Sando Paiva, Ali Rashid Al Raihe
'Dark Waters'
Directed by: Todd Haynes
Starring: Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, William Jackson Harper
Rating: ****
What sanctions would be reimposed?
Under ‘snapback’, measures imposed on Iran by the UN Security Council in six resolutions would be restored, including:
- An arms embargo
- A ban on uranium enrichment and reprocessing
- A ban on launches and other activities with ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear weapons, as well as ballistic missile technology transfer and technical assistance
- A targeted global asset freeze and travel ban on Iranian individuals and entities
- Authorisation for countries to inspect Iran Air Cargo and Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines cargoes for banned goods
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OPINIONS ON PALESTINE & ISRAEL
What is the FNC?
The Federal National Council is one of five federal authorities established by the UAE constitution. It held its first session on December 2, 1972, a year to the day after Federation.
It has 40 members, eight of whom are women. The members represent the UAE population through each of the emirates. Abu Dhabi and Dubai have eight members each, Sharjah and Ras al Khaimah six, and Ajman, Fujairah and Umm Al Quwain have four.
They bring Emirati issues to the council for debate and put those concerns to ministers summoned for questioning.
The FNC’s main functions include passing, amending or rejecting federal draft laws, discussing international treaties and agreements, and offering recommendations on general subjects raised during sessions.
Federal draft laws must first pass through the FNC for recommendations when members can amend the laws to suit the needs of citizens. The draft laws are then forwarded to the Cabinet for consideration and approval.
Since 2006, half of the members have been elected by UAE citizens to serve four-year terms and the other half are appointed by the Ruler’s Courts of the seven emirates.
In the 2015 elections, 78 of the 252 candidates were women. Women also represented 48 per cent of all voters and 67 per cent of the voters were under the age of 40.
Mohammed bin Zayed Majlis
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
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THE SPECS
Engine: 6.75-litre twin-turbocharged V12 petrol engine
Power: 420kW
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How Alia's experiment will help humans get to Mars
Alia’s winning experiment examined how genes might change under the stresses caused by being in space, such as cosmic radiation and microgravity.
Her samples were placed in a machine on board the International Space Station. called a miniPCR thermal cycler, which can copy DNA multiple times.
After the samples were examined on return to Earth, scientists were able to successfully detect changes caused by being in space in the way DNA transmits instructions through proteins and other molecules in living organisms.
Although Alia’s samples were taken from nematode worms, the results have much bigger long term applications, especially for human space flight and long term missions, such as to Mars.
It also means that the first DNA experiments using human genomes can now be carried out on the ISS.
