Most people have a very casual acquaintance with email. In the era of smartphones and text messages, paying proper attention to email etiquette is often the last thing on people’s mind. However, it is very important to know especially when in concerns the workplace. I felt that the article on Email Etiquette provided some very useful points when it concerns how to handle email correspondence at work.
Helpful Tips from the Email Etiquette Article
Have Manners
It’s important to have good manners even when sending email (Rosenberg McKay, n.d.). Writing please and thank you in an email goes a long way especially since it is often difficult to decipher tone through email. When sending email at work, it is important to read and re-read your email before clicking on the send button – your job depends on it.
Check Grammar and Spelling
Be Short Winded
When composing an email at work, this is not the time to talk about an upcoming vacation or lunchtime feast. Keep your email short and to the point. The point is work so each email needs to be actionable. Ask yourself, “is my email useful?” before you send it. Keep a professional one not a chatty one.
Don’t Use Texting Abbreviations
In the age of the smartphone, even though it is tempting to use texting abbreviations such as “ur” for “your” (Rosenberg McKay, n.d.) and “2” for “two” and “too,” do not use them. You have to make sure that you are conscious of this since you may be using your smartphone at our desk. Using texting abbreviations will make you look very amateurish and not professional. Save the texting abbreviations for you family and friends. As with all the other tips in the email etiquette article, it pays to check and double-check before clicking send.
Critique of One Email Etiquette Tip
Get Permission before Sending Attachments
While the Email Etiquette yields great tips, I have one critiques of the tip where it says to ask permission before sending attachments. If you are in the workplace, there should already be implicit permission to send files so this tip is not practical. How are you supposed to ask for permission, by phone? This sort of defeats the purpose of sending email in the first place. The article could do without this tip.
How Email Etiquette Tip Will be Adapted into Computer-Mediated Communication.
These tips will work very well with computer-mediated communication. The channels that mediate the communication of email at work could stand to have filters such as a grammar and spelling check before sending email. The technologies that mediate communication in the workplace could use the tips that the author provides in the article.
Conclusion
Even in a very casual workplace, email etiquette and mediated communication are important for anyone, who is serious about their job. Professional communication is the key always in the workplace. Whether it is email of hard copy correspondence, one has to remember the proper way to conduct communication while at work.
References
Fitzpatrick, J. (2015, June 26). How to Enable the Undo Button in Gmail (and Unsend that Embarrassing Email). Retrieved July 5, 2015, from http://www.howtogeek.com/220601/how-to-enable-the-undo-button-in-gmail-and-unsend-that-embarrassing-email
Rosenberg McKay, D. (n.d.). Email Etiquette for Business Correspondence. Retrieved July 5, 2015, from http://careerplanning.about.com/od/communication/a/email_etiquette.htm
