2 Minute post #3: Write polite emails
It seems to be an unwritten rule: The higher up the food chain in business, the shorter and brisker the emails get. Somewhere on the line, the “hello”, the “please” and the “thank you” get lost. At first sight, this might look like unbelievable efficiency. It might look important, even cool – “hey, Bob is so busy and important, he can just write a one-liner and make a whole department work for a week” – but truth be told, it is not cool. It shows a lack of respect, if you ask me.
So however important you are (or think you are):
Open wit a greeting, address people by their names. Say please. Say thank you. End appropriately. Use upper case and lower case, and put in some grammar while you are at it. If you do not have enough time at hand to write a respectful email, pick up the phone and call the person. If there is not enough time to do even that, gosh, I am sorry for you. Go read some of the articles on GTD on this site to increase your personal effectiveness. Cutting down your mails to barfing orders is NOT the way to go to save time.
Ever suffered from the VP-one-line-mail hammer? Experienced good things because you paid attention to write sensible mails? Let the community know! (yeah, I am implying a KillerConsultant community here. Hey, we all have dreams!)
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4 comments
It’s funny that those highest up the hierarchy of an organisation often send emails with the worst punctuation, spelling and grammar mistakes.
What I like about Twitter is that you don’t need to engage in Hi, Thanks etc. when communicating. Twitter is all about expressing your message as simply and succiently as possible.
Also, when replying to blogs, engaging in forum discussions there is no need for Hi, Regards, Thanks etc.
In many ways, rather than trying to get people to pay more attention to how they write emails, it would be better to spend time getting people to write less emails, and communicate using other mediums that require less adherence to such etiquette.
Good point Richard- there are many occasions in which an email might not even be the right channel for your message to begin with, and that might also solve the time issue I mentioned at the end of the post.
For me there is a distinction between a channel that transports separate messages – a letter, or an email – or a channel that transports an ongoing conversation – like chat or twitter. Of course there is a grey zone – when mailing back and forth with a good friend, for example, mails can take the form of a time-delayed chat.
One thing though: While the “surrounding” formalities might be mandatory or even superfluous in the ongoing conversations, being polite (thank you! please!) and having correct spelling and grammar are needed just everywhere. (Am I too old-fashioned here?)
>being polite (thank you! please!) and having correct spelling and grammar are needed just everywhere. (Am I too old-fashioned here?)
Right you are! Can’t be old-fashioned enough here!
mh…
… besides that I don’t like those “bein’-barked-at”-emails, because I think they are very impolite, there is another thing about them that I find very annoying…
Most of the time i don’t even get what those people hiiiigh above me want from me once they drop into short-message-mode.
Hey! I’m actually working here and certainly don’t have the time to decipher your half-finished sentences, which seem to lack even the tiniest bit of information! Well…
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