A variety of verbal and non-verbal means of communicating exists such as body language; eye contact, sign language, paralanguage, haptic communication, chronemics, and media such as pictures, graphics, sound, and writing.

Nonverbal communication

Nonverbal communication describes the process of conveying meaning in the form of non-word messages through e.g. gesture, body language or posture; facial expression and eye contact, object communication such as clothing, hairstyles, architecture, symbols and infographics, as well as through an aggregate of the above. Non-verbal communication is also called silent language and plays a key role in human day to day life from employment relations to romantic engagements.
Speech also contains nonverbal elements known as paralanguage. These include voice quality, emotion and speaking style as well as prosodic features such as rhythm, intonation and stress. Likewise, written texts include nonverbal elements such as handwriting style, spatial arrangement of words and the use of emoticons to convey emotional expressions in pictorial form.

Visual communication

Visual communication is the conveyance of ideas and information through creation of visual representations. Primarily associated with two dimensional images, it includes: signs, typography, drawing, graphic design, illustration, colours, and electronic resources, video and TV. Recent research in the field has focused on web design and graphically oriented usability. Graphic designers use methods of visual communication in their professional practice.

Oral communication

Oral communication, while primarily referring to spoken verbal communication, typically relies on both words, visual aids and non-verbal elements to support the conveyance of the meaning. Oral communication includes discussion, speeches, presentations, interpersonal communication and many other varieties. In face to face communication the body language and voice tonality plays a significant role and may have a greater impact on the listener than the intended content of the spoken words.

A great presenter must capture the attention of the audience and connect with them. For example, out of two persons telling the same joke one may greatly amuse the audience due to his body language and tone of voice while the second person, using the exact same words, bores and irritates the audience Visual aid can help to facilitate effective communication and is almost always used in presentations for an audience.

A widely cited and widely mis-interpreted figure used to emphasize the importance of delivery states that "communication comprise 55% body language, 38% tone of voice, 7% content of words", the so-called "7%-38%-55% rule". This is not however what the cited research shows – rather, when conveying emotion, if body language, tone of voice, and words disagree, then body language and tone of voice will be believed more than words. For example, a person saying "I’m delighted to meet you" while mumbling, hunched over, and looking away will be interpreted as insincere. (Further discussion at Albert Mehrabian: Three elements of communication.)

Communication Model: Woven Written Oral Visual Electronic Non-verbal

Written communication and its historical development

Over time the forms of and ideas about communication have evolved through progression of technology. Advances include communications psychology and media psychology; an emerging field of study. Researchers divides the progression of written communication into three revolutionary stages called "Information Communication Revolutions" (Source needed).

During the 1st stage written communication first emerged through the use of pictographs. The pictograms were made in stone, hence written communication was not yet mobile.

During the 2nd stage writing began to appear on paper, papyrus, clay, and wax (etc). Common alphabets were introduced and allowed for the uniformity of language across large distances. A leap in technology occurred when the Gutenberg printing-press was invented in the 15th century.

The 3rd stage is characterised by the transfer of information through controlled waves and electronic signals.

Communication is thus a process by which meaning is assigned and conveyed in an attempt to create shared understanding. This process, which requires a vast repertoire of skills in interpersonal processing, listening, observing, speaking, questioning, analyzing, gestures and evaluating enables collaboration and cooperation.

Barriers to successful communication include message overload (when a person receives too many messages at the same time), and message complexity.

Nonhuman communication

Every information exchange between living organisms — i.e. transmission of signals that involve a living sender and receiver can be considered a form of communication; and even primitive creatures such as corals are competent to communicate. Nonhuman communication also include cell signaling, cellular communication, and chemical transmissions between primitive organisms like bacteria and within the plant and fungal kingdoms.

Animal communication

The broad field of animal communication encompasses most of the issues in ethology. Animal communication can be defined as any behavior of one animal that affects the current or future behavior of another animal. The study of animal communication, called zoosemiotics’ (distinguishable from anthroposemiotics, the study of human communication) has played an important part in the development of ethology, sociobiology, and the study of animal cognition. Animal communication, and indeed the understanding of the animal world in general, is a rapidly growing field, and even in the 21st century so far, many prior understandings related to diverse fields such as personal symbolic name use, animal emotions, animal culture and learning, and even sexual conduct, long thought to be well understood, have been revolutionized.

Plants and fungi

Communication is observed within the plant organism, i.e. within plant cells and between plant cells, between plants of the same or related species, and between plants and non-plant organisms, especially in the root zone. Plant roots communicate in parallel with rhizome bacteria, with fungi and with insects in the soil. These parallel sign-mediated interactions are governed by syntactic, pragmatic and semantic rules, and are possible because of the decentralized "nervous system" of plants. The original meaning of the word "neuron" in Greek is "vegetable fiber" and recent research has shown that most of the intraorganismic plant communication processes are neuronal-like. Plants also communicate via volatiles when exposed to herbivory attack behavior to warn neighboring plants. In parallel they produce other volatiles to attract parasites which attack these herbivores. In Stress situations plants can overwrite the genetic code they inherited from their parents and revert to that of their grand- or great-grandparents.

Fungi communicate to coordinate and organize their growth and development such as the formation of mycelia and fruiting bodies. Fungi communicate with same and related species as well as with nonfungal organisms in a great variety of symbiotic interactions, especially with bacteria, unicellular eukaryotes, plants and insects through semiochemicals of biotic origin. The semiochemicals trigger the fungal organism to react in a specific manner, while if the same chemical molecules are not part of biotic messages, they do not trigger the fungal organism to react. This implies that fungal organisms can differ between molecules taking part in biotic messages and similar molecules being irrelevant in the situation. So far five different primary signalling molecules are known to coordinate different behavioral patterns such as filamentation, mating, growth, and pathogenicity. Behavioral coordination and production of signalling substances is achieved through interpretation processes that enables the organism to differ between self or non-self, abiotic indicator, biotic message from similar, related, or non-related species, and even filter out "noise", i.e. similar molecules without biotic content

Shannon and Weaver Model of Communication

Communication major dimensions scheme

Communication code scheme

Linear Communication Model

Interactional Model of Communication

Berlo’s Sender-Message-Channel-Receiver Model of Communication

Transactional Model of Communication