Comments on: Are your emails getting pithier?

By: Justin

Justin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:22:36 +0000

Btw only my partner Janet calls me Jussi, but if we get to know each other you might get away with it

By: Justin

Justin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 10:21:09 +0000

I find my emails pithier, though I’m not sure Twitter is the cause. But, I’m still conscious of tone in greeting and closing. I start formal and verbose and ease into casual and pithy depending on how the email exchanges go. Bobulate has two great posts, that describe this:

http://iii.bobulate.com/2008/12/anatomy-of-a-salutation/
http://iii.bobulate.com/2007/11/second-chance-for-a-last-impression/

By: Frank

Frank — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 06:17:12 +0000

If running a PC use the freeware http://www.phraseexpress.com and your emails are comprehensive and nice.

Frank

By: admin

admin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:46:26 +0000

Hi Jussi,

Thank you so much!

I didn’t know about bit levers! I have just installed typeit4me!

Cheers,
James

By: admin

admin — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 19:23:25 +0000

@Eleanor, my email etiquette hasn’t changed much either, as I am worried what people might think. Unless of course i know the person!

By: Eleanor

Eleanor — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:22:18 +0000

Hi James! It’s an interesting point However, I don’t think my email writing has changed a lot, since becoming a tweeter. I think it’s important to keep them brief but like to still start with usual salutations, etc as I think most ppl have a shared understanding of email etiquette now and I wouldn’t want to assume that others are using Twitter, and therefore like Stuart said, for brevity to be taken the wrong way.

By: Jussi

Jussi — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 03:06:18 +0000

Hi James,

good questions. I reckon you need to pay special attention to the pleasantries when communicating via email, as it’s a bit of a “cold” medium by nature and bringing some warmth into it will help deliver your message.

Some people use templates to save time, for example by including “Best regards, Such-an-such” in their signature. This is slightly dangerous as your templated sign-off may be in contradiction with the message. Have you ever seen one of these:

“Michael,
Rararara $!@## … more angry rambling …

Cheers!
Barbara”

The best solution I have found are “bit levers”, as introduced by Mark Hurst in his book Bit Literacy ( http://bitliteracy.com/ ). Bit levers are little tools that let you pre-compose text fragments (snippets) and then insert them anywhere by just typing an abbreviation. Here’s a couple that I use all the time: “cd-TAB” -> “Cheers, Jussi”, “pfa-TAB” - “Please find attached”.

Try http://www.smileonmymac.com/TextExpander/ or http://www.typeit4me.com/ for yourself to see what I mean

Cheers, Jussi

By: admin

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:53:03 +0000

Agreed Diane, being friendly never hurt anyone! In fact being overly polite and formal can work in your favour, particularly considering so few people do it these days!

By: admin

admin — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:43:50 +0000

Thanks Vaughn, you put it very clearly, ‘if you’ve met them in real life’. However, I always take care with clients

Stuart, The other problem I face, is that I end up sending all sorts of short emails across a day, particularly to my web developers. And then I sometimes think, ‘I should put them all in one longer email and press send when the day is done?’ None would get lost that way!

By: Diane

Diane — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 22:41:51 +0000

Not only are my emails getting shorter and more to the point, sometimes I find myself getting impatient with people who still fill their emails with unnecessary blah. I need to remind myself that not everyone is using Twitter, so they are usually not forced to be precise in 140 characters, and that they only want to be nice… Being friendly is never wrong, especially if all it takes is a few additional words to start or end an email.