Don't Send the Wrong Message

A Naples woman made her living as a writer, but when it came to e-mails, she didn’t bother with good form. She rarely opened with a greeting—no Dear or Good morning or even Hi. She didn’t care enough to spell or punctuate properly. A typical example: "did you get my message i ’l be laate sory gotta run."

To at least one client, that slapdash style implied she was too busy to be bothered with details—which cast doubts about her work from the start.

The too-busy tone is a common e-mail blunder in the workplace, I learned from local workers I surveyed.

It won’t get you arrested or entangled in a lawsuit—or cause public outrage, as when someone in the Lee County Sheriff’s Office forwarded a racially charged cartoon to co-workers. It won’t be water cooler gossip, as when a man asked a recently jilted co-worker for breakup advice. And it won’t put people at risk, as when the White House reportedly sent out a trip manifest that included reporters’ Social Security, passport and other private information.

In comparison, a poorly written e-mail doesn’t seem much of a blunder at all.

"A lot of people just don’t think [proofreading e-mails] is worth it. They don’t realize that they’ve made a mistake, or just don’t pay attention to detail," says Lydia Ramsey, a business-etiquette author, speaker and trainer based in Savannah, Ga. "Or we send [it] before we remember we’re supposed to be checking it."

In any event, careless communication is among the surest ways to tarnish your professional reputation. The Naples writer I mentioned lost her job with that client partly as a result of her messy missives. And Ramsey says she wouldn’t give a reference to someone from whom she received sloppy e-mails.

Of course, other types of e-mail infractions can be just as damaging. The case of the writer, for instance, has another side. Months before she was fired, she sent her manager a typically hasty e-mail and, fed up, the manager forwarded it to a colleague with a note: "We have got to find someone else."

Moments later, the Naples writer wrote back, this time with perfect punctuation: "What do you mean by that?"

The manager gasped. She’d hit "reply" instead of "forward," and now had to worm her way out of a most uncomfortable situation. It’s a prime example of why Ramsey and others who write about netiquette suggest composing an e-mail first, and then typing the address second.

Statistics vary on how much time we spend per day on business e-mail. A recent survey of small-business owners by SurePayroll, a payroll service company that also tracks trends in the U.S. small-business economy, found that more than 50 percent spend one to two hours reading or writing e-mail on a daily basis. Some Web sites say 40 percent of the average American worker’s day is spent sifting through e-mail. Anecdotally, most agree they get a lot of e-mails—which makes it hard to demand or deliver e-mail perfection.

That’s OK, as long as our mistakes are occasional and not habitual, Ramsey says. Some provide workday levity, such as the press release about a Sunday brunch serving "beagles." And who among us hasn’t sent an e-mail to the wrong Dave or Susan, simply because we clicked on the first name that popped up after we typed "D" or "S"? Even the etiquette expert has a flawed record: Recently, Ramsey’s kitten walked across her keyboard, managing to compose and send one mess of an e-mail to someone at her church.

One young man, after receiving a top-level certification in his field, jokingly e-mailed his friend in human resources that she could now call him "master." Instead of composing a fresh message, he meant to reply to one she’d sent earlier—only, he hit "reply all" and sent it to the entire company. Co-workers had a field day teasing him about the mistake. One wrote back, "Master of Outlook you are not."

It’s even worse when earnest communication reads like a joke. This was the case with a job applicant for a receptionist position. Her résumé, submitted through an online job site, listed work as a "sever" in "guess service" for a company that was "a great place to work … but I got pregnent." She also worked for "Crackal Barrle" and ran the office of a roofing business "while they whiched from one company to an other."

The more disastrous e-mails I read and heard about, the more I wondered if it was fair to chuckle at them—particularly those from individuals whose jobs do not require much education. Ramsey assuaged my guilt.

"I would not expect them to express themselves like Ernest Hemingway. But if they are going to use e-mail rather than the phone or [meeting] one-on-one, I think they owe it to themselves to have someone else write it, have someone check it or, if that doesn’t work—and it isn’t always going to work—[they should] go learn some of this [themselves]. It’s not that hard to do," Ramsey says.

One job applicant looking for a public relations position could have used that advice before she submitted this: "Hi ... You mentioned there was an opening. Do you know what the salary range is? I’m headed out of town and won’t be back [for weeks]. I may follow up with you then."

The server’s résumé would have been filled with errors, the press release would have had that typo and the PR applicant’s note would have shown poor judgment even had they been sent via fax or snail mail. "E-mail just makes it so much easier for other people to see these problems," Ramsey says.

On the topic of lack of judgment, the hostile resignation letter ranks high. I came across several in my reporting: One worker accused his boss of cronyism; another called his co-workers "snakes in the grass." A kiss-off e-mail might feel satisfying to the author, but it could stand in the way of future employment if sufficiently circulated. The angry author appears to be a huge corporate liability, and in business, appearance counts.

In fact, the e-mails you send are as much a part of your professional image as the clothes you wear, Ramsey says. Make sure you’re covered.

Think Before You Click

Lydia Ramsey, author of the business etiquette book Manners That Sell: Adding the Polish that Adds Profits, offers 12 pitfalls to avoid:

1. Omitting the subject line. Given the huge volume of e-mail that each person receives, the subject header is essential if you want your message read any time soon.
2. Not making your subject line meaningful. Your e-mail will have lots of competition.
3. Failing to change the header to correspond with the subject. Changing it will allow the recipient to find a specific document without having to search every one you sent.
4. Not personalizing your message to the recipient. Failure to use the person’s name can make you and your e-mail seem cold.
5. Not accounting for tone. The reader cannot see your face or hear your tone of voice, so choose your words carefully and thoughtfully.
6. Forgetting to check for spelling and grammar. If you don’t check to be sure e-mail is correct, people will question the caliber of other work you do.
7. Writing the Great American Novel. If you find yourself writing an overly long message, pick up the phone or call a meeting.
8. Forwarding e-mail without permission. Too often, confidential information has gone global because of someone’s lack of judgment.
9. Thinking that no one else will ever see your e-mail. Don’t use [e-mail] to send anything that you couldn’t stand to see on a billboard on your way to work the next day.
10. Leaving off your signature. Always close with your name, even though it is included at the top of the e-mail, and add contact information.
11. Expecting an instant response. If your communication is so important that you need to hear back right away, use the phone.
12. Completing the "to" line first. The name or address of the person to whom you are writing is actually the last piece of information you should enter.