I believe strongly in the value of electronic mail in both corporate and personal domains. Email is cheaper and faster than a letter, less intrusive than a phone call, and less hassle than a FAX. Using email, differences in location and time zone are less of an obstacle to communication. There is also evidence that email leads to a more egalitarian information structure. Because of these advantages, email use is exploding.

Sadly, in the twenty-plus years that I have been using email, I have seen many people suffer mishaps because they did not understand how to adjust their communication styles to this new medium. That is the purpose of this column - to try to help people avoid those problems.

This is not a column on the mechanics of sending email - which buttons to push or how to attach a photograph. Those details are unique to every email software package, and are better handled by manuals for the program. I instead focus on the content of an email message: how to say what you need to say.

Hopefully, this guide will make you examine your assumptions about email and thus help you maximize your email effectiveness. Then you can write to reflect your own personality and choice.

What makes email so special?

Electronic communication, because of its speed and broadcasting ability, is fundamentally different from paper-based communication. Because the turnaround time can be so fast, email is more conversational than traditional paper-based media.

In a paper document, it is absolutely essential to make everything completely clear and unambiguous because your audience may not have a chance to ask for clarification. With email documents, your recipient can ask questions immediately. Email thus tends, like conversational speech, to be sloppier than communications on paper.

This is not always bad. It makes little sense to slave over a message for hours, making sure that your spelling is faultless, your words eloquent, and your grammar beyond reproach, if the point of the message is to tell your assistant that you are on your way to lunch.

However, your correspondent also won't have normal status cues such as dress, diction, or dialect, so may make assumptions based on your name, address, and - above all - facility with language. You need to be aware of when you can be sloppy and when you have to be meticulous.

Email also does not convey emotions nearly as well as face-to-face or even over the telephone. It lacks vocal inflection, gestures, and a shared environment. Your correspondent may have difficulty telling if you are serious or kidding, happy or sad, frustrated or euphoric. Sarcasm is particularly dangerous to use in email.

Another difference between email and older media is that what the sender sees when composing a message might not look like what the reader sees. Your vocal cords make sound waves that are perceived basically the same by both your ears and your audience's. The paper that you write your contract on is the same paper that your client sees. But with email, the software and hardware that you use for composing, sending, storing, downloading, and reading may be completely different what your correspondent uses. Your message's visual qualities may be quite different by the time it gets to someone else's screen.

Thus your email compositions should be different from both your paper compositions and your speech. In subsequent columns, I will show you how to tailor your message to this new medium.

Also See:

Published: September 14, 1999

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.