Legal Brief for September, 2023

EMAILS - Some Tips

All of us experience on a daily basis the convenience and frustration of using email.  It has become an apparently essential part of our lives, whether on the job or in our personal lives.  I use the word "apparently" because for those of us over the age of 45 we can remember when we functioned just fine without email.  I came across a small book a few years ago with an eye catching title - SEND - Why People Email So Badly and How To Do It Better, published in 2008.  Given that the use of email has increased greatly since 2008 the observations and recommendations in SEND are more valuable than ever.  Here are a few of the many helpful tips found in the book:

1. "Even though it can be tempting to hide behind email, the phone, or whatever technology you have at hand, remember to follow the golden rule.  Never do anything electronically that you would want others to do to you in person."

2. "Paragraphs.  Keep them short.  Otherwise, people won't be able to read your emails easily on a computer screen.  Make sure you break a paragraph when you shift topics.  The key point or instructions should never be buried in a long paragraph."

3. "Create space.  When you're asking an important question in an email, make sure it doesn't get buried in the text.  Keep it to one sentence.  Set it off in its own paragraph.  If you're asking several questions, consider using numbers or asterisks to set them apart."

4. "Requests are among the most dangerous of all emails.  The request you can write in ten seconds can take the person to whom you send it an entire day to fulfill.  Before you send an email asking for something, make sure it's something you really need - and something that it's appropriate to ask for."

5. "If you expect action, make that clear, too, even if the only action expected is for the information to be passed along to others."

6. "If you are thanking someone, don't ask for something else.  Thanking and asking don't mix."

7. "If your email isn't necessary, it should be deleted.  We all spend far too much time asking one another to do things that are essentially frivolous - and the cost to business and to all of our lives is staggering.  If you don't really need to know something, don't ask."

8. "The rules for handling emotionally volatile material on email are not all that difficult: If you wouldn't make the comment to the other person's face and stick around for the response, you probably shouldn't put it in an email."

I sincerely hope that my emails embody the wisdom noted in these excerpts; and I hope that you will find these to be useful tips for your own email practices.