Text E. E-Mail Etiquette

Don't Be A Novelist

Messages should be concise and to the point. Think of it as a telephone conversation, except you are typing instead of speaking. Nobody has ever won a Pulitzer Prize for a telephone conversation nor will they win one for an e-mail message.

It’s also important to remember that some people receive hundreds of e-mail messages a day (yes, there are such people), so the last thing they want to see is a message from someone who thinks he/she is the next Dickens.

Too Much Punctuation!!!

Don't get caught up in grammar and punctuation, especially excessive punctuation. You' ll see lots of e-mail messages where people put a dozen exclamation points at the end of a sentence for added emphasis. Big deal. Exclamation points (called "bangs" in computer circles) are just another form of ending a sentence. If something is important it should be reflected in your text, not in your punctuation.

Formatting Is Not Everything

Formatting can be everything, but not here. Plain text is it. Period. End of sentence. Using HTML, or heaven forbid the Microsquish Rich Text Format, to format messages so that they have fancy fonts, colors or whatever is asking for trouble. There are lots of e-mail clients (and some servers) which can not handle messages in these formats. The message will come in as utter gibberish or in the worst case, crash the e-mail client. I've seen it happen.

Abbreviations

Abbreviation usage is quite rampant with e-mail. In the quest to save keystrokes, users have traded clarity for confusion (unless you understand the abbreviations). Some of the more common abbreviations are listed below. I would recommend that you use abbreviations that are already common to the English language, such as FYI and BTW. Beyond that, you run the risk of confusing your recipient.

BCNU - be seeing you

BTW - by the way

FWIW - for what it's worth

FYI - for your information

IMHO - in my humble opinion

OBO - or best offer

ROTFL - rolling on the floor laughing

RTFM - read the funny manual

TNSTAAFL - |there’s no such thing as a free lunch

TTFN - ta ta for now

TTYL – talk to you later

Smilies

Part of the nature of a good one-on-one conversation is the use of visual cues. How important are facial expressions and body gestures to a conversation? A simple eye movement can mean the difference between "yes" and "YES". What about auditory cues? The results are the same. Since there are no visual or auditory cues with e-mail, users have come up with something called "smilies", They are simple strings of characters that are interspersed in the e-mail text to convey the writer’s emotions (cues). The most common example is :-). Turn your head to the left and you should see a happy face (the colon are the eyes, the dash is the nose and the parentheses is the mouth). Here are some more examples.

:-) Smiley face

;-) Wink (light sarcasm)

:-I Indifference

:-> Devilish grin (heavy sarcasm)

8-) Eye-glasses

:-D Shock or surprise

:-/ Perplexed

:-( Frown (anger or displeasure)

:-P Wry smile

;-} Leer

:-Q Smoker

:-e Disappoinrment

:-@ Scream

:-O Yell

:-* Drunk

:-{} Wears lipstick

:- Male

>- Female

Please don't ask me to interpret, because I don't understand them all.

They are typically found at the end of sentences and will usually refer back to the prior statement. I would recommend you use these sparingly. There are hundreds of these things and their translations are by no means universal (a miss-interpreted smilie could lead to a flame).

Salutations

The question here is "How personal is too personal?" or to be more specific, how do you open your e-mail: “Dear Sir”, “Dear Mr. Smith”, “Joe” or none of the aforementioned.

If you posed this question to Miss Manners, I expect she would come back with a quick answer - use the standard formalities - but I don't know that I would agree.

In a non-business situation, I would recommend that you bypass the standard formalities. At most, I would only include something along the lines of “Dear Virgil” or just “Virgil”.

In the business situation, things are much more complicated. Each situation will need to be evaluated on its own, but in general, I would use the following as a guide: If you normally address a person as Miss/Mrs./Ms./Mr. Smith then that's the way I would initially address them in e-mail. If you normally call them by their first name then I would either omit the salutation or follow the guideline specified in the prior paragraph. If you are unsure, stick to the formal salutation. It's the safest bet.

Part II

BANK SERVICES

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 934