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Easy E-mail? Writing Effective E-mail E-mailing on the Internet seems like the easiest thing in the world, and in a way it is. But most of us make it far easier than it should be. In fact, we need to be as careful of our e-mail as we are of the paper letters we send. As more and more business and personal communication is being done by e-mail, we all need to be aware of and observe e-mail etiquette. The most important point I will make is that when we e-mail someone, we want to communicate an idea, the right idea. If our e-mail in some way blocks what we are trying to communicate, we have wasted our time and someone else’s. Consider this e-mail I recently received: "Woul; you please call me and inform me on how you access you system????? We are accessing via cabell college, however. I cannot get accees using yu system via GAtyetown, my wife is an employee and can access via cable colleg!!!! I am not very happy with the access approach to Gametown, either Gametown or Cabel does not have a simple approach to activating a new system." [I have changed the college and ISP names, but the type of error remains the same.] When I received this e-mail, I had a very hard time trying to figure out what this person was complaining about, so I did not know how to help him. Or take this e-mail from a student: "ms. gott, i don’t understand why yu give me a D on my report, i work very hard on it and spent a lot of time but you didnt give me the grade i deserved." [She was right—I should have failed her paper, which was filled with similar mistakes.] This student wanted to convince me that she was a good student, but the e-mail she sent certainly was far from being a literate example of good writing. The first consideration in writing an e-mail is length. An e-mail should generally be fairly short; the rule of thumb is no more lines than will fill an average monitor’s screen, or twenty-four lines. Anything longer should generally be sent as an attachment. That means that no e-mail should ever be forwarded with all the previous addresses still at the top. One of the most annoying types of e-mail I receive is the one that has been forwarded twenty, thirty, a hundred times with all the former recipients’ e-mail addresses coming before the message. Forwarding an e-mail like this is a violation of the other recipients’ privacy and a waste of the reader’s time. Indeed, it is extremely frustrating to be forced to scroll through all that garbage to get to a message that often winds up not being worth the time! Usually, I just trash those e-mails long before I get to the message. If an e-mail must be long, it should be broken into manageable blocks of information, similar to paragraphs, but shorter. Don’t bother to indent these blocks as the indentation often does not come through. Instead, double space between blocks or use asterisks to divide them. Tone and style are another important consideration in an e-mail. If I want to write an informal, friendly e-mail, I will use casual language, perhaps some slang, and some acronyms [LOL] and smileys [ :) ]. In a formal e-mail, however, I will use formal language, which means I will not use slang, acronyms (unless they are ones used in the profession), and smileys. Because my reader cannot see my face, I will be very careful to use just the right words because I do not want my tone to convey an unwarranted emotion (like anger). Some e-mail programs have a mood watch feature to help the writer avoid inflammatory language. "Flaming" (inflammatory e-mails) is generally considered very bad manners, no matter how angry the writer is. Part of the tone of an e-mail is also the heading. No matter that my name is in the header of the e-mail. I want the writer to address me. A simple "Dear Sherry" or "Hi Sherry" can set an appropriate tone and seem less brusque. In a business e-mail, this salutation is even more important. Since we all want to be perceived favorably, it is very important in an e-mail (as in any written communication) to observe the conventions of standard English. That means watching our spelling, punctuation, grammar, and so on. An e-mail with incorrect spelling or improper (or worse, missing) punctuation can be very confusing, as my first example demonstrated. Lack of appropriate capitalization suggests to the reader that the writer is extremely sloppy, illiterate, or inconsiderate, or perhaps all three. Unfortunately, because sending an e-mail is so easy—no envelope or stamp to worry about—our tendency is to whip something off and hit the send button without proofreading or thinking about what we have written. Likewise, do not type an e-mail all in capital letters. It can be hard to read. Beyond that, the Internet world considers caps the equivalent of shouting, and sending an e-mail that shouts is bad manners. Finally, when replying to an e-mail, the considerate writer will put his or her message above the original message. Or if replying directly to specific portions of the original message, the writer might select specific lines, leave them intact while deleting the others, and respond directly to those. Basically, the idea is the same as the first one. The recipient of an e-mail does not want to scroll through what he or she has said to find your reply. What all this amounts to is common sense. We have something to say and/or an impression to convey. Therefore, we want to put our best "mouse" forward and write a powerful e-mail that engages the reader. We do not want to turn our reader off by careless, inconsiderate e-mails. If we do that, we might be unhappy with the results. So write well, and ponder what you write before you hit send. Happy e-mailing! by Sherry Gott is a senior editor for American Book Publishing. © 2005 American Book Publishing™ *All other trademarks used by permission. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy and Trademark Use Policy.
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