Email Antics: IV

When we waste time with email because of our own actions, complaining bitterly about it doesn't make much sense. To get control of email, we have to change how we work with it. Here's Part IV of a little catalog of ways to waste time with email. See "Email Antics: III," Point Lookout for January 14, 2004, for more.

Gossip about people in a message, then accidentally send it to them, too

Gossiping in email is dangerous. Even if you don't accidentally send the gossip to the wrong people, someone else can, at any time. It's called the "Forward" button.

Assume that the sender is the actual sender

Most often, the From does contain the actual sender's name and address. But there are viruses, spammers, and others in the world who know how to "spoof" the From, with malice in mind. Before you launch a tirade, consider whether the person in the From really is the sender.

Age your inbox

Aging a message in your inbox before answering might be OK, but would you like one of your urgent queries to be treated that way? Your delaying might be a serious inconvenience to your correspondent. If you really are so busy that you can't reply fully, send a short note explaining the delay and estimating when you can respond.

Print a message before reading

Unless you Humor is culture-specific,
and often personal.
Tag your humor somehow.have a health reason for printing before reading, get used to the twenty-first century. Learn to read directly from your display. If your display is hard to read, change the default font and colors to something you like better. After you've read the message, you can print it if it's important enough. Most of the truly important messages still come to you on paper anyway.

Forget that humor is cultural — even microcultural

Humor is culture-specific, and often personal. That's why we so often disagree about what (or who) is funny. Assume that some people won't understand your humor, or worse, that they'll understand it but don't think it's funny. Tag your humor somehow — smileys work pretty well. Seriously. ;^)

Use sarcasm

Sarcasm is usually obvious in live conversation, when we can use voice tone, body language, and facial expressions to signal the sarcasm. In email, sarcasm is dangerous, because the tone of the voice in your head as you write isn't attached to the message. The consequences of misunderstanding can be truly horrible. If you must use sarcasm, indicate it in some explicit way, such as: <Begin sarcasm>attaching to the message a drawing of a hammer that recipients can use to hit themselves over the head until they get it<End sarcasm>.

If you do some of these, and you'd like to stop, tack this list on your wall. Highlight the ones you want to avoid, and review it once in a while to see how you're doing. Be patient, expect lapses, and celebrate your victories. First in this series   Top    Next Issue

Are you so buried in email that you don't even have time to delete your spam? Do you miss important messages? So many of the problems we have with email are actually within our power to solve, if we just realize the consequences of our own actions. Read 101 Tips for Writing and Managing Email to learn how to make peace with your inbox. Order Now!

And if you have organizational responsibility, you can help transform the culture to make more effective use of email. You can reduce volume while you make content more valuable. You can discourage email flame wars and that blizzard of useless if well-intended messages from colleagues and subordinates. Read Where There's Smoke There's Email to learn how to make email more productive at the organizational scale — and less dangerous. Order Now!

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See also Effective Communication at Work and Writing and Managing Email for more related articles.

Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout

Coming April 24: Antipatterns for Time-Constrained Communication: 1

Knowing how to recognize just a few patterns that can lead to miscommunication can be helpful in reducing the incidence of problems. Here is Part 1 of a collection of communication antipatterns that arise in technical communication under time pressure. Available here and by RSS on April 24.

And on May 1: Antipatterns for Time-Constrained Communication: 2

Recognizing just a few patterns that can lead to miscommunication can reduce the incidence of problems. Here is Part 2 of a collection of antipatterns that arise in technical communication under time pressure, emphasizing those that depend on content. Available here and by RSS on May 1.

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