Minding your e-manners

Maybe e-mail software should come with a warning label.

Perhaps something like "Caution: May Inflict Unintended Injury" or "Warning: This Weapon is Loaded."

That’s because, even after years in which e-mail has been a common tool for personal and business communications, many people still don’t seem to know how to use it.

How else to explain the curt, insensitive and often downright rude e-mail messages that pop into my inbox with disturbing regularity?

Sure, some of these messages are intended to be discourteous. There’s always someone who disagrees with something I’ve done or written. And they decide that being nasty is the best way to let me know it.

But those aren’t the messages I’m referring to. I’m talking instead about e-mails from co-workers, friends and even family who are just passing around the routine communications of life.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s perfectly fine with me to send e-mails that are casual, informal and brief. I am not the Mister Manners of the Internet.

But even at that, too many messages arrive with a tone that fairly screams that the senders don’t give a flying megabyte about the impact of their words. As a writer, I can appreciate the challenge involved expressing yourself in print – even if that "print" only involves electrons zipping through cyberspace to be displayed as pixels on a computer screen.

The writing challenge is only magnified when the message must be both brief and composed quickly. No less a writer than Mark Twain famously pointed that out by telling one correspondent that he’d have written a shorter letter if only he’d had the time.

But still, still, still.

What can people be thinking when they hit the send button to a colleague or friend with a message that contains a brusque command or an abrupt judgment?

I’ve gotten e-mails – and probably you have, too – where the entire message consisted of something as snippy as "Call me by 6 p.m.," or "I need that immediately," or "Don’t be late."

Hello? Earth-to-sender: How would you like to get such a note? Did the potential impact of the e-mail even cross your mind before you sent it?

In my experience, recipients have an immediate, visceral reaction that is exactly the opposite of what the sender hoped to accomplish.

And here’s the funny thing: The senders of rude e-mail are often oblivious to what they’ve done. They may imagine that people understand that they’re really busy. They may figure that the casual nature of e-mail calls for curt, telegram-like correspondence.

But whatever they’re thinking – if they’re thinking at all – they are mistaken. I’ve seen people fume for days over thoughtless e-mails that were innocently intended.

The solution is simple enough. And it involves little effort on the part of the e-mail sender. Want something done? Phrase it as a question. Throw in the word "please." Add a "thanks in advance."

In short, make sure that your e-mails carry two messages. One would be whatever you want to say or ask. The other would show you realize that there’s a human being at the receiving end. — The Hartford Courant