I just sent
a text message to my friend. “What tome
is jut?” That went over well. How about “Happy Bitch Day”? That one worked well, too.
When I read
the text exchanges that people post on Facebook, I laugh along with everyone
else, and then sit back and contemplate my own embarrassing moments.
As is
normal, I tend to think in long, run-on sentences that meander along a very
poorly defined route that occasionally leads to an undetermined
destination. In this case, it has led me
to an actual set of thoughts. Prepare
for a lecture. Got your pencil
sharpened? Ears open? Good.
Let’s begin.
Writing is a
form of communication that dates back a really long time in human years. At first, I am sure that mostly nouns and
verbs were used. Eventually, someone
came up with the idea that we could modify nouns and verbs. They added adjectives, adverbs, articles, and
a whole lot more. Latin was really big
on conjugation in order to express present, past and future. At some point we gained the ability to
express ourselves in written form. Spellcheck
and grammar check arrived a lot later.
Okay, enough
made-up history. We’ll work on where my
rickety trail of thought took me.
During the
course of my business career I have met a lot of people face-to-face who have
later written me. It is often easier to
write a quick note, especially with email being such an integral part of our
lives, than it is to try to hunt someone down by phone.
I wish that
people would focus, edit and read what they write. Their letters are terrible! Some of them make no sense at all. Poor grammar and spelling (spellcheck does
not care if there is their way of getting enough capital to go see the capitol)
contribute to misunderstandings and a poor overall impression of the
writer. While I know a lot of the people
who write me emails and I know that they are pretty darned intelligent people,
I also maintain a very bad impression of their overall education when they
write me.
A business
email is the same as a job interview. If
you are serious about getting a job, you’ll dress properly and practice good
manners and communication. An email is
even more critical because I can’t see you and my only available data from
which to draw the conclusion that you are a complete moron, a demanding pain in
the rear or a good person with whom I would like to develop a rapport is via
that very same email. Once a negative
opinion is formed, it will never be completely erased.
I have
trouble with the answers to emails as well.
Years ago, one of our managers would fire off responses to my emails that
didn’t answer the questions that I asked.
We went round and round on it and finally she realized that she needed
to read the emails slowly, or maybe twice in order to slow down and give her
enough time to compose a good response.
Of course, I learned from it too and that lesson serves me well. My job, as ‘interviewer’ or respondent to an
email is to answer the questions asked and provide the information
requested. More than that is useless and
less than that subjects me to another email.
Time is wasted and communication is hindered.
It is
important to provide exactly what is requested.
Again, an example. I had a friend
call in a panic because he was being audited by the IRS. He had received a letter requesting
justification of his mileage for business purposes. He was being audited! He panicked.
When I arrived at his house and saw the ten or so boxes of receipts,
returns, prior and subsequent years’ information that he wanted to bring to the
audit, I stopped him. “What does the
letter request?” I asked. “They want to
see my mileage for work,” he began. He
went on to say that they were ‘going to catch him, and he’d be in jail or
something’.
I asked if
he had kept a log of his mileage, which he had in a small diary. We took that to the audit, where they told
him how impressed they were with his record-keeping. End of audit.
Too much
information, long wordy comments and answers to unasked questions and just
plain too much does us no good these days.
We don’t have time to read and certainly can’t absorb everything. It is best left to long letters to family.
Go write
your mother.
