My biggest email embarrassment? Spelling my own name wrong in a message to a senior official. A friend of mine forwarded an email, forgetting that the recipient was the topic of a catty discussion further down the included chain. A coworker sent a personal email to the all-staff distribution list, reaching over 20,000 suddenly disgruntled employees, who hit reply all to vent their frustration and overwhelmed the mail server.
David Shipley, deputy editorial page editor and op-ed page editor of the New York Times, and Will Schwalbe, senior vice-president and editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books, want to help us all avoid those kinds of email embarrassments and disasters. Their book Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home starts with an example that makes mine trivial — a chain of emails from Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during Hurricane Katrina, containing frivolous attempted witticisms about his unfashionable FEMA attire, for example, during the worst days of the disaster.
Most of the book focuses on how not to look like an idiot or do harm to relationships in business dealings, but Send also advises us on how not to get fired or land in jail. Even though the worst case scenarios may seem alarmist, reading them might just make you think twice before sending. As the recipient of far too many vague, unintentionally rude, unwisely hotheaded, and unnecessary emails in a day, and the sender of at least a few, I know you'll be doing yourself and your recipients a huge favour by listening to Shipley and Schwalbe.
They cover when to email and when to pick up the phone or a pen or nothing at all; consciously thinking about each element of an email — subject line, cc field, attachments, etc. — in order to make the most out of an email exchange; writing the perfect email for the type of message you want to convey; and how to avoid harm or even jail. The book summarizes it all in a simple acronym: Simple, Effective, Necessary, Done. SEND.
Article comments
1 - Jack
This book is really useful for all persons who have a business and support team for supporting customers and also advertising for their products by emails. I bought this book last week and i am happy with it.