People tell me that I am pretty blunt via email but I consider it a form of efficiency. That is why I was pleasantly surprised when a friend sent me an article from Entrepreneur by Ross Mccammon that seemed to mirror my sentiments about email etiquette. I absolutely love his philosophy of brusque emailing and making a call when email is impractical.
I highly recommend reading the whole article over at the Entrepreneur but here are a few highlights:
- "What Would Robert De Niro Type?" Here’s how it works: You get an e-mail. You read that e-mail. You respond to the e-mail as if you were Robert De Niro. You will find that your e-mail responses will involve messages like "Sure" and "Great" and "Yes" and "No" and "Perfect" and "Come on" and "Sorry."
- "Just because you receive an e-mail doesn’t mean you need to reply by e-mail,"
- You might not receive a 500-word e-mail that ends with the worst question of all time: "Thoughts?"
- Ask yourself if you would CC yourself. Easy with the CC.
- If your message is less than seven words, put it in the subject line.
I plan on forwarding this one to quite a few contacts…
PB Forever ( View Profile) - Posts: 243
Posted: December 29, 2011 at 12:24 PM EST
Thank you. I’m sharing this with my work. We have some violators to this concept. LOL.
Diego Nei, MBA ( View Profile) - Posts: 267
Posted: December 29, 2011 at 1:38 PM EST from my BlackBerry PlayBook | OS 1.0.0
Great article! If I may, here are my thoughts on the subject:http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pt&tl=en&u=http://papogp.com/2010/05/15/10-dicas-para-e-mails/
Ronen Halevy ( View Profile) - Posts: 3316
Posted: December 29, 2011 at 5:32 PM EST
Some good points though hard to tell with Google translate!
sam81 ( View Profile) - Posts: 686
Posted: December 30, 2011 at 10:22 PM EST from my BlackBerry PlayBook | OS 1.0.0
I personally use email in business as if I were writing a letter. Proper grammer, spelling, etc. I proof read every word at least twice to make sure that it makes sense and gets my point accross. Non business personal email is pretty much the same but I don’t worry about making it too business like/formal.
Ronen Halevy ( View Profile) - Posts: 3316
Posted: December 31, 2011 at 5:58 PM EST
See my wife writes emails like that. Simply takes her ages and she never gets through her inbox.