Monday, October 15, 2007

an example of how not to write a business email

Previous posts I have written give some instruction in the best way to respond to criticism in a business setting and the best way to deal with a call from your project lead. Today's post is the correct and incorrect usage of text fonts/caps/size in your business email.

an example from an email today:
Even suppressing the Bed swaps still makes the statistical data invalid because we will show a different pt in that bed and the second system MUST keep in sync with the first.

What it boils down to is that if they want to be able to keep statistical data from the
second system they CANNOT do bed swaps, and because the second system is facility wide (which I thought
the first system was also) hospital 5 CANNOT do bed swaps because hospitals 1-4 do want the
statistical data.


You will notice that the author feels free to use ALL CAPS when emphasizing her point. She does this in nearly all of her emails. It makes me what to write back to her: Debbie, THANK YOU for the clear emphasis in your EMAILS. Without your capitalizations I would NEVER know exactly where you wanted to put the STRESS in your sentences. YOUR emails always make me think of your face and the CRAZY way you wear your hair.
Thanks AGAIN.

My advice: if you are trying to get across the meaning of the words, just use words with the meaning you need. There aren't a lot of situations where words like "must" and "cannot" are misinterpreted. No need to underline, bold, or capitalize each letter. Use your mastery of different words to convey a stronger meaning if the word you are using isn't enough on it's own.
If you are trying to get across a feeling, then I suggest that you also examine why you need to convey a feeling in a business email and if that feeling should be coming across in a business communication. Perhaps you are a very bitchy person and you are trying to make the other people feel stupid, because that is what we are getting from it.

THANK you.

4 comments:

11frogs said...

Is this maybe one of those work-related posts that should be made more anonymous to protect all parties and jobs involved?

Lucia said...

good point.

KittyWithClaws said...

It's HILARIOUS though.

loud said...

Funny...