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Tuesday, November 5, 2013

The lost art of writing an email...

Emails... we love them so much but in the same breath we hate them.

They have made life so much easier that now communicating is almost difficult.

Email has forever changed the way the world does business.

But something is missing, and this something that is missing is driving me crazy!

Since when did it become acceptable to completely omit any type of greeting in an email? I guess I missed that email...

When did it become socially acceptable to simply go straight into a demand and a request of doing something without even the slightest greeting of 'hello, hi, or good morning?' 

We obviously know the person to whom we are writing an email, so why do we completely ignore the fact that the person on the other end has a name?

This isn't acceptable in face-to-face conversations, so why in the world would anyone think it's acceptable in the digital space? #rhetoricalquestion

For the record, this is a blanket statement which assumes that everyone is having an email writing issue when we know in fact that's not true, but for the purpose of this blog post, it's basically everyone.

On the other end, when did it become acceptable to end an email without a simple, 'thank you,' or a simple, 'have a nice day?'

More times than not emails are ending with the end of the last sentence or statement, rather than a nice smiley face emoticon (I know they get over used), but don't we all feel better when people end a statement with a nice little face :)

Here's the deal, I've come close to simply not responding to emails that I thought appeared to be written rudely. Is this rash and most likely overreacting, probably, but my concern goes beyond what is rational vs. what's not.

The speed and ease of use of email have almost made it acceptable to be quick, to the point, and a validation of ignoring all basic points of common courtesy.

I presume I am not alone in this dilemma, so please, for me and the others, start your emails with a greeting, perhaps even a name, and please end them with something nice and an appropriate ending. In between feel free to make all the requests and demands in the world. The sandwich model in this case helps to ease the pain of the middle...