Lover or Fighter?
Jul 06 2005
Alright – we’ve talked about cool email, fun email, exclusive email, crappy email, and porn spam – all from other companies. BUT, we haven’t talked about business email on a personal level. It begs the question: Are you a lover or a fighter?
Tone is so hard to get across in email and I had a minor epiphany yesterday. Sometimes, people who I know are lovers (meaning friendly, outgoing, likeable) come across in email as fighters because they are reactive or rushed to get a curt email out the door. Hell, I’ve done it more often than I’d like to count. Lovers and fighters – take a few extra seconds to put a little extra love into your emails.
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July 7th, 2005 at 5:37 pm
I mean, why not always make email about “The Love”. With the million or so emails I send out an hour, I always talk about things you can do to increase your love. Lovers..Fighters… and talkers.
Tone is very hard to judge sometimes as when we write as we think, our points do not come across as well. Makes sure to reread the email before you send it, and if you are not sure, save it as a draft and send it later, you may find you just end up deleting it as the actual act of writing it was enough.
July 7th, 2005 at 5:57 pm
As any of us who use email more than a few times a week know, except in the most blatant instances, email lacks any tone or inflection. This is frustrating, of course, when receiving email that you’re sure is scrappy, but don’t want to jump to conclusions (and thus, potentially, end up the fool). As well, it’s annoying when you want to *send* a note that’s got some lilt to it — maybe sarcastic, edgy, ironic or slightly harsh — but are sure it’ll either be misunderstood or ignored (’cause, as a rule, “There’s no tone in email.”) Boring!
The solution? We should all stop writing such pansy-ass email; we’re diluting conversation. Write in a way that’s impossible to misread. Hunter S. Thompson would never have written, “I’m frustrated to hear you’ll miss your deadline. Thanks. – HST”
Instead: “You pathetic piss-ant excuse for a writer! Get off your ass and make your deadline, or pack up your desk and go beg work from whatever shitty rag will have you.”
It’s refreshing.