[IWE] Corp Email Rant

[Peter Whysall]

Today's rant is about the woeful state of peoples' email etiquette in the
office, where most of us are cursed to work.

1. Do not tick the "High priority" flag if you're not the managing
director or CEO, and the message is not about the very large pay rise
you're about to award me. Your priorities are unlikely to be my
priorities.

2. Read what you've written. Computers are very good at checking spelling.
If you're not bothered about clicking the "check spelling" button, it's a
pretty good clue that you typed a load of wordvomit into a window and
clicked "send". Oh, guess what? Your message is a load of semi-literate
verbal spew.

3. Do not use the CC: list as a passive-aggressive attempt to intimidate
me. I don't care.

4. In a protracted email exchange, take 10 of your valuable seconds to
trim off the gigabyte or so of disclaimers at the bottom of the message.

5. Do not send me, by email, a Word document that is formatted to look
like an email, call it a "memo", and then add the corporate logo to the
top of it so that I get an email message containing a 1MB file with about
100 words of text. QA departments are particularly likely to do this.

6. FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S GOOD, HOLY AND RIGHT DELETE THE COMIC SANS
FONT FROM YOUR COMPUTER AND STOP SENDING ME BUSINESS MAIL THAT USES IT.
*deletes Comic Sans Font, is defeated by PDF with embedded TTF fonts*

7. Jokes forwarded by email are never funny. Fact. The more forwarded it
is, the less funny it is. Fact.

8. If you forward a message where your sole contribution is "FYI", I hate
you. Why is it FMI? Why are you making ME work out which messages in your
inbox should be of I to M?

9. Ditch that faux-formal tone that semi-literate people like you use to
embiggen themselves by email. When someone sends me an email that begins,
"It has come to my attention that..." then I know that weapons-grade
cocksocketry is sure to follow.

10. Managers! Saying "I want you to do X" in an email is a sure way to get
my back up. Try "Please". Manners are free.