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ArtLA, 2016 via Art.sy

Rules of Email Etiquette.

From “Mastering Civility : A Manifesto for the Workplace.” (by Christine Porath, published in December 2016, NY & Boston)

This was essentially something i read a few months back this year — which though i picked up in a book sale bin i found it immensely interesting. And i will literally take it out of the page, and into a blog — only since i think it is widely applicable since the history of e-mail, or publishing — well, mostly so i can read it (i’ve over the years actually lost track of all physical books) instead of cross-referenced in my mind, but realised that i need the page to be able to commence with the technicality of transporting formatted content from a published book’s page to the sub-indexed / ibid-stratified paginations of a published blog.

I think over the years, we realise that serially we email people with a format that standard across all ‘clients’ — lotus notes, microsoft, gmail, icloud, etc. Sometimes, we connect via instant messaging (i always use this more, even in the development teams’ internal slack 24-hr IR) to avoid the heft of being heckled for “emailing wrongly”. Because, there is a corp-meta-way of emailing actually observed practically applied, much like the way we do social etiquette.

This was from Chapter 9, Practice E-Civility (p.108).

1/ Chapter 1: BASIC Do’s & Dont’s (p.110) — also known as something you probably know by now for the 20 years of using intranet e-mail, and the more popular inter-net-based internet-cafe browser versions of emailing (yahoo, gmail, outlook).

“Be thoughtful and deliberate about how, when, and why you e-mail. Pay attention to length, thereby respecting your respondents’ time. Write with clarity, and sincerity. Don’t send emails indiscriminately. Respond in a timely fashion. Use proper grammar. Don’t share private e-mail addresses with a larger group. These and other practices mentioned in the following list are not complicated, but we so often fail to adopt them amidst the rush and tension of our days.”

2/ Chapter 2: Highlighted, More Rules (p.111)

More Rules Of E-mail Etiquette.

• Write a short but descriptive subject line. Choose utility over creativity.
• Copy people judiciously. Include only those needed.
• Honour e-requests as dependably as requests made face-to-face.
• If you’re in doubt, about your humour, sarcasm, or criticism, then reread, rethink, and resist the temptation.
• If you’re uncertain about your tone, save the message and review it later with a fresh perspective before sending it.
• Consider the time of day you send an e-mail. You can write it now but maybe send it later using delayed delivery.
• Be clear about times, dates, time zones, and any acronyms.
• Before responding to an e-mail, read completely through it.
• Don’t mark an e-mail as “urgent”, unless it’s truly necessary; let the recipient decide for him or herself if it’s really *URGENT!!!*
• Avoid using “Notify sender” and follow-up flags.
• Include a signature block with your full name, title, and contact information, especially if the person you’re corresponding with has provided this.
• Never send anything to a business e-mail address that the recipient would be embarassed to have the entire organisation read.
• Make sure you put the names in your “To:” field in the proper order, typically by rank or according to the varying degree of responsibility people bear for handing a situation.
• Consider whether an apology is best delivered via e-mail. It might be a great way to start an apology that you later continue in person. If you choose this strategy, include “apology” or “sorry” in the subject line to ensure the recipient opens it.
• Don’t select “Reply all” unless absolutely appropriate.
• Don’t WRITE MESSAGES ALL IN CAPS.
• Don’t forward e-mails to make someone look bad.
• Don’t write things in an e-mail that you wouldn’t say to a person’s face.
• Don’t use exclamation points to convey negative emotion. And in serious correspondence, don’t use more than one at a time.

Via Art.sy, 2016.

3/ Chapter 3: Master the Ask. (p.112)

Before you send an e-mail asking for something, make sure it’s something you really need and something that’s appropriate to request from the receiver. Some additional points of etiquette to help with all your e-requests:

• Be brief & direct when making a request. Include who, what, and when.
• If the person needs to act on your message, make that clear in the subject line.
• Thank the recipient — genuinely.
• Don’t put the recipient on a tight deadline, if possible.
• Don’t name times to meet face-to-face or offer small windows of time to talk.
• Give the recipient ample time to respond before following up.

4/ Chapter 4: To sum up. (p.113)

(Know When Not To Send)

“The number one act for which people fault themselves in the Civility Quiz in the book, is using e-mail when face-to-face communication is needed. Sensitive issues, conflict situations, and performance reviews all call for an actual, physical presence.

A good rule of thumb: If you’re wondering whether or not you should send that e-mail. Stop. Don’t send it. Pick up the phone, or meet face to face.”

So, if you find the read useful, i guess it’s now more than just for the archive.

The paragraphs written are more or less re-formatted content from the book, and something easier to digest, in a blog form. But i think most emails are still using long-format emails - and now, what consists of one-to-one sending versus ‘oh, here’s the link i’ve written a blog’ (totally one-to-followers), or ‘maybe you can just google me’ (totally one-to-random, probably no hits and a fresh heap of annoyance to boot to the person issuing their query).

The fact that there is a whole book, (books) written on the subject means it isn’t something as intuitive as we think — i’d imagine the manuals passed out in the companies that actually needed two-week’s training sessions to manage their intranet systems on “how to compose a message” which could actually make for another chapter of this topic on the blog. (As it is what treps would use as a commonality to communicate, appropriately than messaging platforms.)

This is like a quick precis of a general tried and tested milieu that we all tracked with the technology/ies that have passed the sieve of time.

The Office made a pass at the normalcy of its application in a sensitivity training session. And i herald its usefulness to the end.

We create ways of communicating - or methods to be able to move ideas, notices of meet ups, FYIs, or the trademark letters that made up telegrams (Stop.), instant messaging, & other things that could easily pen and disseminate what we say once whipped up in our minds almost real-time or instantaneously, (because we know it takes longer typed in). And just as instantaneously, the expectation for responses (reverting to our e-mail anticipated very anxiously) - with all the marketing spam messages that come piling into our inboxes in its stead. But, because time is of the essence, we can decide the best use of our time — either to compile goodwill at meetings, to take more information in groups, communing or syncing with development groups, company-wide seminars, 4-city-wide seasonal sales hops, and sometimes simply opt for the college-fresh-50-words-or-less trail, and the now-becoming touch-pad-obsolete comfort of tapping away at keyboards.

You can watch videos, read books about it, deliberate over a cuppa in the corner newly launched swank of a super-saloon workspace, and then discuss this brightly in a group skype or leave slack messages.

Or i can just email you.