Source / Encoding / Transmission Source, encoder and transmitter are three elements that belong to the "initialisation" stage

of the communication process. They were lumped into the notion of 'sender' in section The Source The source is the initiator of the process: he or she wants to transmit thoughts, ideas and feelings to his or her counterpart who thus becomes the receiver. Encoding Encoding refers to the activities that a source goes through to translate thoughts, ideas and feelings into a form that may be perceived by the senses. For example, before speaking, an individual has to use his/her brain to select words and sentence structures from his/her personal database to carry the message. Naturally, different encoders have different skills in choosing the most appropriate codes for communicating. This accounts for differences in people's communication skills! Transmission Transmission refers to the action of using physical channels to get the message across to the receiver. In the above-mentioned example, after having encoded the message, the speaker will have to use his vocal organs to emit sound signals and thus pronounce the words and sentences of the message. The encoding / transmission process might also take place over various stages. For telephone conversations, the speaker encodes thoughts into words and the telephone mechanism transforms the sound waves into electrical variations along the line to the receiving telephone.