This article is directed at most of us in the business world: though filled with good intentions, we sometimes create confused or embarrassed looks on the faces of our e-mail recipients. I will describe a set of widely-used e-mail practices in a convenient how-to form, so that you can shake things up around the workplace by befuddling your business brethren.
How to Say It
Make sure to send the email to recipients who do not need the information. If you're unsure exactly who should be on the "to" and "cc" line of your email, then just keep typing names at random until you come up with at least ten or more people.
If someone sends a message that you don't care about to a large distribution list, then be sure to use "Reply All" and complain at great length that they are wasting your time and clogging your inbox with unnecessary communication.
There are two great strategies to choose from when you compose the subject line of your email:
- Use a subject line such as "Information" or "One more thing" that does not clarify the topic of the message. Some people think it makes your email less clear, or it will be hard to find the information when you're searching for it later. Those people are a bunch of squares.
- Or use the opposite approach: put the entire contents of your message in the subject line and leave the body of the message blank. If someone doesn't read the whole subject line and gets confused when the text is blank, then it's their problem.
- Try going rogue. For instance, a subject line such as "New Swift Sales Initiative: Sell Young, Poor Irish Children to English Restaurants for Cheap Meat" is an eye-catching title.
What to Say
The body of your email is anybody's guess. You can say something that nobody will understand or remember, or you can say something so unforgettable that it's likely to come up on a future performance review!
Feel free to make false claims or sweeping accusations using explosive language. Don't worry that someone will forward your comments to your boss, the customer or the entire project team. If that does happen, simply try pressing the "undo" button. And if you're still worried, reply to all on the same message stream, claiming that you never said anything of the sort.
Bury the Lede
Email is the opposite of journalism, so use the non-inverted pyramid structure for your body text. Save the best for last. Make sure that your email body text contains as much information as possible, and that all the most important details are presented at the end. Think of it as a shaggy dog joke that takes a very long time to tell, and saves the punch line for the last sentence. Keep them guessing.
Don't worry about writing clearly or being grammatically correct when you type your message. Just remember: the extra time you save in writing quickly will be made up for by others, who will take longer to read it. And if you send a password-protected attachment to protect privacy or confidentiality, then don't forget to mention the password in the body of the email. Any unintended recipients who should happen to come across your message will have you to thank.
Erik Zoltan - Erik Zoltan has more than 20 years of computing experience working for large and small corporations such as ESI Technology, EDS, Inc. and ...
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