The end of August is looming, and before we get earnest about back to school and rededicated to work, perhaps it’s time for a bit o’ fun.
Toni Bowers, who writes for TechRepublic on HR-related issues, posted her comments about “Four email types that can drive you crazy” a few months back.
She is, as she says, “all about communication,” yet, there are four distinct email types that drive her crazy. Here they are:
- The doctoral candidate ‒ This well-mannered soul writes a formal message that frequently goes into exhaustive detail. You’re not going to find any texting short forms in her writing. If you’re short on time, as we all are, you may not find yourself opening her messages eagerly.
- The stream-of-consciousness emailer ‒ I’m a copywriter, so I have a professional interest in coherence and clarity. Conventional punctuation is a must. Run-on sentences make the communicator look uneducated or sloppy, two big robbers of credibility.
- The out-of-context-mailer ‒ Please provide context. Even a little bit can be helpful. Don’t expect readers to remember every detail about a topic when they are plowing through 50 or 60 messages of varying degrees of importance every day.
- The emotive emailer ‒ Keep a communication brief and simple. Lose the exclamation points and the keyboard emoticons. And, of course, don’t write when angry.
Ms. Bowers got a few great comments on her post, including one from a guy who “loathes” people who include quotes, extra fonts, and backgrounds in their signature lines. Well, XQUUUSE me. I’m gonna stay faithful to my Clint Eastwood quote, thank you very much.
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