Think Before You Send

Many people’s biggest e-mail pet peeve is the overuse of hitting “reply all.” The State Department would agree. They recently announced that they would take disciplinary action against American diplomats who unnecessarily used the “reply all” function on e-mails with large distribution lists.

American diplomats – and anyone else wanting to brush up on e-mail etiquette – should read SEND by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe, The New York Times deputy editorial page editor and former editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books, respectively.

For most of us, writing and replying to e-mails is automatic. The authors make a good case that it shouldn’t be. E-mail should be clinically dissected from who and why you CC: – and in what order … from taking the time to write a proper subject line … to making sure your response mirrors the tone and professionalism of the sender. After all, there’s a world of difference between “Thank you for making sure I got the report” and “Thank you for making sure I get the report.”

Other takeaways from the book include:

• Be careful making e-mail requests. The request that takes you ten seconds to write can take the person to whom you send it an entire day to fulfill. Even a question that’s easily answered is an interruption and to some degree an imposition.
• Exaggerate emotions for emphasis. Since it’s difficult to read emotions in email, it’s necessary to implicitly show them. One communications colleague said she ordinarily doesn’t use exclamation points in her writing but does so in e-mail to convey excitement or just generally make the e-mail sound more positive.
• Use contractions in e-mails. Not using contractions in e-mail takes a more formal tone and even sounds more severe and condescending. (The word “don’t” is a warning; the phrase “do not” is both a warning and a reprimand.)

The authors also contend that e-mail is still too fluid and evolving to stringently adhere to “rules” – since many things are situational. This sentiment echoes that of social media, and there is no doubt that books will be published on social media etiquette. In fact, many e-mail rules apply to social media … so it’s best to brush up on them to ensure a good foundation for communication.