I hate e-mail.
Not for the commonly cited but nevertheless stupid excuse of, “It allows people unlimited quick access to me,” (doesn’t that allow you unlimited access to them?) but rather because of a lack of standards to which people hold themselves.
There are different standards for people depending on the situation and the person. For example, when someone e-mails me asking where my room is, it takes 30 seconds for me to send that e-mail, but a more complex question like asking me the design and layout of my room is a bit longer. I’m not getting anything out of writing it, so how long should I take before I respond to it? Should someone who demands, “Can you please respond within the next 15 hours???” get any precedence over someone who e-mailed me two days earlier, or should I ignore them as a whiney little ninny pants (TM Jeremy Steinman, 2003)?
If your e-mail consists of a LOLcat and a serious question in the postscript, how serious can I take you and your poorly grammared feline?
The Internet is not a big truck (but rather, a series of tubes), so we should not have the rules of the road, but rules of the tweetosphere. I’d like to set out the first of a 27-part series about e-mailing:
Do not send people e-mails on Friday, Saturday or Sunday. People don’t do work on these days or, no pun intended, they mail it in (note: I had 10 puns here before seeing which made the cut, thankfully only one pun in 10 did). Usually people just answer all of these messages on Monday, so yours probably will get lost in the shuffle.
Subject line should approximate the e-mail’s body. I’ve had 380 e-mails with “Freewater” in the subject line in the past year; 375 of them have specified what it was in relation to (“freewater- interest in joining,” “freewater- why can’t we bring the talent of ‘Pirates 2’ to Duke?”, “Free water for anyone that is for the greater commitment to real, comfortable jeans”). The other five people were just cast in the final Saw movie for taking advantage of society.
Do not send people e-mails on Monday. They will further get lost in the pile of e-mails.
Make your point known. I understand if you have long, wordy e-mails that have a lot of information that could potentially be useful, but most times I really don’t care. If you want me to fill out a form, put it at the top or make sure you tell me to. Code your e-mail so if I click on the LOLcat it takes me to your survey, but don’t expect me to do something for you if the first mention is in the P.S.
You shouldn’t have to scroll. This is a corollary to the last one. We are horrendously lazy and don’t want to scroll or click more than we have to. If it’s not important enough to be mentioned in the first page, don’t bother.
Do not send people e-mails on Tuesday or Thursday. Since I’ve already eliminated Monday and the weekend, everyone will be trying to outsmart each other by sending them at the beginning or end of the “week.”
E-mail is not always the best form of communication. We’ve all gotten the e-mail that looks like Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Spect. General rule of thumb—if Aretha Franklin already sang about your subject title, you’re probably part of a conversation that should have occurred over the phone or an Internet meme.
But before you dismiss me as a whiney little ninny pants (TM Jeremy Steinman, 2003), just think about how often one or all of these things has annoyed you. If you still think I’m off-base, write me an e-mail. Just know that every time you send me a rule-breaking e-mail, you will get three LOLDOGZ in return.
Jeremy Steinman is a Trinity senior. His column runs every other Thursday.
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