Short and sweet | Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home

Should be Required Reading! | Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home | David Shipley, Will Schwalbe

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	• Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home David Shipley, Will Schwalbe Knopf, 2007 - 247 pages average customer review:based on 46 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

"Native speaker's" grammar book of e-mail

If you are naturally good at writing good e-mails, how do you teach someone else to compose better e-mails? It's like being a native speaker and trying to teach someone your language without knowing anything about grammar. You would need a textbook and here it comes!

I actually got this book because I receive bad e-mails way too often. Time after time I'm shocked by how many people do this -- customers, colleagues, you name it! So in order to understand these offenders better I bought this book -- just as the subtitle of the book suggests.

How would they not know these obvious things, I ask myself? This book helps you to get back to basics. It lays out things that sound trivial in a way which is never boring or dull. And as much as you think you know all this stuff already, you will certainly find a couple of useful advices from it.

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Short and sweet

... perhaps itself a bit like an email! I personally prefer email for most of my communications, and I think my kind don't get a totally fair shake in this book. Email can have its advantages in charged situations. Like a letter, you have time to think about exactly what you want to say, and if necessary, you have time to calm down. If you're struggling with strong emotions, your face and/or voice will probably show them; if necessary, you can keep these to yourself in an email.

Email also has the advantage of keeping a record of a long-past agreement. There's a reason most contracts aren't verbal. If you're like me and need to establish complex agreements with large groups of people, email is invaluable. When that pesky IT guy comes back and swears that we promised him 100 hours of free service, we can say sweetly, no, if you look at the meeting notes we sent last month, there's no mention of it. And, unfortunately, here's another email indicating that you signed off.

However, I give this book four stars, because it offered up some surprise insights, even for a hardened emailer like me. Most people have had at least one experience of unintentionally offending (or taking offense to) their fellow emailers. My approach has always been to take extra care when writing about a potentially difficult subject. However, this book explains the fundmental cause of such difficulties. It's not that email is a bad medium; it's a medium with no underlying context, which means even a neutral email serves as a screen onto which the reader projects his or her own anxieties. I believe that's why most of us try hard to make our messages friendly, and I, unlike the book, have no trouble with judicious use of smilies. A message can't be mean if it's got a smiley! (-:

I do have a specific contradiction to one piece of advice in this book: if you send a message you didn't intend to, do NOT use Outlook's message recall service. (1) All your recipients will receive the message anyway; (2) If they make the mistake of clicking on your recall message, it will tie up the host email program; (3) it will leave the original message in its place, just waiting to do damage, and (4) you have now called special attention to it with your futile attempts undo your mistake. Treat it like it's US mail. Once the message is out of your inbox, you ain't never taking it back.

My office keeps a copy in the bathrooms, because we're uncultured that way. I must admit, this is a perfect book to dip into during a visit to the office loo.

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Should be Required Reading!

"Do you know someone who drives you crazy with their email? Then rush out and buy this book immediately. Give them a copy of Send, which should be required reading for anyone who uses email."

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Don't give it away, you'll never get it back!

In these days of constant email, anything that helps educate about good email use and etiquette is a good idea in my book.

We immediately implemented some of the suggestions made in this book. But as with anything, rules are meant to be broken, so take it for what it's worth.

This was so hot in my office that it made all the rounds - and I never got it back! It's a good, quick read and very actionable.

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A Must-Own for both the Savvy and the Clueless

This breezy tome will do an excellent job of making a savvy writer from even the most oblivious Luddite. It is to internet communication what The Elements of Style is to the written word: clear, concise instruction that elaborates not only on what should be done, but explains why.

Email was thrust upon an unsuspecting populace years ago; unlike English grammar and composition, the proper use of email in not learned in most classrooms, and this witty book feels a much needed gap. If--like FEMA director Michael Brown--you have learned the hard way that sarcasm and humor often don't translate into email, this book is for you. If you've inadvertently cringed exactly one second after you clicked send, then you are the target audience for this book. IF YOU SEND EMAILS IN ALL CAPS AND DON'T REALIZE YOU ARE SCREAMING, BUY THE BOOK NOW.

From subject lines to salutations, flames to bcc's, Send should be required reading at any company that provides email to its employees: It should be given to all employees at orientation, along with their timecard and name badge. The easy guidelines in this book--kindly illustrated with laugh-out-loud examples--might well save businesses hours of time and trouble that are often caused when emails are misdirected or misinterpreted.

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When should you email, and when should you call, fax, or just show up?

What is the crucial?and most often overlooked?line in an email?

What is the best strategy when you send (in anger or error) a potentially career-ending electronic bombshell?

Enter Send. Whether you email just a little or never stop, use a desktop or a handheld, here, at last, is an authoritative and delightful book that shows how to write the perfect email?at work, at school, or anywhere. Send also points out the numerous (but not always obvious) times when email can be the worst option and might land you in hot water (or even jail!).

The secret is, of course, to think before you click. Send is nothing short of a survival guide for the digital age?wise, brimming with good humor, and filled with helpful lessons from the authors? own email experiences (and mistakes). In short: absolutely e-ssential.

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