The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home
By David Shipley and Will Schwalbe (Knopf, $19.95)
E-mail has accelerated the way we conduct business and communicate with friends and families. And it has accelerated job terminations, killed friendships and shattered families. So authors Shipley and Schwalbe offer guidelines to follow before hitting that Send button.
1. E-mail communications are vastly different from dialogue, during which “our emotional brains are constantly monitoring the reactions of the person to whom we’re speaking.”
2. E-mail can replace many phone calls but shouldn’t replace all. “Conveying an emotion, handling a delicate situation, testing the waters — all these challenges are usually better undertaken with the human voice.”
3. Consider the CC recipients carefully. “Just because someone was in on the e-mail exchange from the start doesn’t mean that person should be there forever.”
4. Three rules of e-mail replies: (1) Answer questions at the start, not the end, of your reply. (2) If interlacing your responses within their text, separate your words via color or size. (3) Make sure your date/time stamps are correct.
5. If you must e-mail an apology, put it in the active voice. “I made a mistake.”
