Comments on Minding Your Ps And Qs

Alexander Wilms — Wed, 07 May 2008 20:07:40 GMT

One other thought – I read the first articles now that companies now start to take countermeasures against the flood of business emails – like “mail-free fridays”. Colleagues of mine tell me that they start to ignore mails where they are on “cc” – they simply drown in mails where people have put them on “cc” just to be on the safe side, to document their doings, to avoid decisions or responsibility. Because sending an email is so easy people even send emails to “communicate” to colleagues sitting in the office next door.
Much of the “communication” that passes my mailbox each day is actually none – the latin word “communicare” translates to “get a common understanding”. A real act of communication only happens if the message that has been communicated creates a common understanding with all parties involved, the sender and recipient(s). So the sender who initiates the message must make sure that the recipients really understand the message – either by designing it in a way that will leave no doubt or open questions on the recipients side, or by confirming with the recipient that both understood the message in the same way. The latter is easy in a direct oral dialogue by evaluating the recipients body language or just asking. The former requires a lot of time and effort…

Will Schwalbe — Sat, 08 Mar 2008 12:46:19 GMT

Yaniv—Thanks so much for the incredibly thoughtful review of SEND. And I was also very interested in the comments from Chris and Laurie. “Spammy” emails are a huge problem. Everyone gripes about “Spam” and there has been some attention given lately to the huge problem of “Bacn”—but there hasn’t been nearly enough talk about genuinely personal emails that are too chatty, too frequent, or have overlong signatures. (I do think your office manager example is fascinating—it’s a classic example of how one size doesn’t fit all—and I can see how useful it would be for the office manager and the recipients). And I should add that I’m a big fan of Mark Hurst and his terrific book BIT LITERACY, so was really pleased to see that mentioned in Laurie’s comment.

And you make excellent points, too, about some of the things we missed. I wish we had put in something about the “arms race”—it’s incredibly interesting. And I’m not at all current on how to make email easier to retrieve on a search utility, so exploring that is my homework assignment for the next week.

I do, however, want to mount a mildly spirited defense of the discussion about the tonal difference between “Sincerely” and “Best.” As I’ve been talking to people, I’ve been finding that this is an area of real concern and confusion. For example, I met a very nice college student at Seton Hall a few months ago who was ridiculed by his office mates at his investment bank summer internship because he kept using “Sincerely” as his closing in all his emails to them, even after working there for more than month. They nicknamed him “Sincerely” but he still couldn’t quite see what he was doing wrong. He thought he was being polite when he was actually being stuffy.

Also, thanks for quoting the “Defcon” example. But I’m embarrassed to say that we made a mistake with it—we reversed the Defcon order. Defcon One is the highest state of alert. There’s a new edition of the book coming in September and we’ve fixed it for that; we’ve also added some discussion of “inbox zero” and other ways people have proposed to keep email from becoming overwhelming. And we put in something about handheld etiquette, too.

Finally, what a fascinating site!!! I’ll be coming back often.

Sincerely, well, er, Best! :-)

Will
co-author of SEND

Yaniv Nord — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 23:57:00 GMT

Chris – Outlook has a control on its signature settings which lets you only attach a signature to your first message – the office manager I mentioned thankfully enables that feature. So, yes, agreed, no need to bury me in a signature tsunami on every reply :)

Chris Butler — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:58:10 GMT

Yaniv, I am in full agreement on keeping signatures light and definitely free of graphics. I’m interested in the example you mentioned of the office manager. I wonder, does he include the full signature on every email if they are replies in a long thread? My guess is that a long signature might grow more annoying if it appears with every reply in a longer string. Thanks for your response. CB

Yaniv Nord — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:51:44 GMT

Hi Chris,

The book does not contain a ton of information about signatures, though a couple of key points are raised: 1) Let people know when you are emailing from a mobile device (it will help them forgive your typos on that small keypad and also provides some nice context); and 2) Avoid long rambling, lawyerly disclaimers.

I would add that you should definitely avoid graphics in your signature line – they often show up as phantom attachments in the inbox and generally add bulk to the message.

That being said, some rules are made to be broken. A noteworthy example is the office manager at my current company, who has email signature that spans about 40 lines and includes answers to every questions you might want to ask someone in his position. Forgot the login information for the building’s guest registration system? Find one of his emails and look in the signature. Need to book travel through the company’s corporate system? Look in the signature. It’s quite brilliant really, because by attaching that information to every email he’s kept you from emailing him with the same stupid question that he’s already answered 50 times! His signature functions as a highly user-centric portal to the company’s intranet. Who would know better than him what kinds of office information people are constantly seeking?

laurie kalmanson — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 02:11:56 GMT

clear writing is clear thinking—thus was it ever

email just makes it more obvious

related: a book called “bit literacy,” by friend and colleague mark hurst, on mastering the stream of stuff coming at us digitally from all directions

Chris Butler — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 13:21:41 GMT

Yaniv,
Thanks for sharing your thoughts about this book, which sounds like it would be worth reading. Despite being completely reliant upon email, I think we’re still figuring it out- and clumsily at that! There are times when I’ve received hundreds of emails a day, and at that volume it is easy to let go of any etiquette standards you may have had at one point. But, as you rightly point out, paying attention to the detail of your words- even the order of your recipient list (something I’ve never considered but probably will now)- is worth the extra time it takes. I recently wrote a quick blog post (you can read it here: http://www.newfangled.com/spammy_emails) about what I called ‘spammy’ emails, which was mostly a gripe about some of the points you made (every email being urgent, sign-off lines, too-much-information signatures, etc.), and have made an update to it linking to and recommending this article. What are your thoughts (and does the book touch on this) about email signatures?