Email is still a useful way to communicate, but it’s also one of the easiest ways to be take out a small chunk of someone’s day. Most people, including me, have at one point or another fallen into one of the traps that waste others’ time.
Some examples are listed below:
Dear Julia, Dear Reed, Dear Julius etc.
I’m Julian and the clues are in my email address julian.reed@[my_employers_name].com as well as in my signature at the bottom of the email you are responding to
FPA CARP BRD, please respond by EOD. TYVM
Sorry that I come across as someone who needs their mind sharpening. But thank you for spending part of your working day thinking up how to incorporate a little cryptic puzzle into your message for me…
! Urgent flags for a non-urgent message
Your lack of preparation is not my emergency. Using the urgent flag does not mean that you jump the queue! You’re going to the back of the queue!
LOTS OF TEXT IN CAPS!
Don’t shout at me, I’m sensitive!
Or are you worried that I will not understand the most important aspects of the email because I was off that day in school when they taught how to read the alphabet in lower case?
These feature’s are all aligned with the MVP. As for the main feature, it’s delivery date is next week.
There are two specks on my computer screen and the dusting I am doing to get rid of them isn’t working! Oh, hang on, they are apostrophes – you did that on purpose, didn’t you?
A useful refresher on apostrophe rules can be found on this page.
An email sent to 55 people and only four people need to actively engage
51 people don’t need to watch the email ‘tennis match’ between those actively engaging. In my opinion, real tennis is a good spectator sport – but none of the email spectators are on the edge of their seats, glued to Outlook, awaiting the email equivalent of a winning drop shot.
John replies to all 55 people in the thread when saying nothing more than “thanks” to Jane
Nothing changes for me, or the other 53 recipients, when we receive John’s email indicating that he had sufficient gratitude to type 6 characters. Saying “thanks” is great John, but do we all really need to know that you are polite?