3 Evil Mistakes of E-mail.

It is amazing how e-mails have come to be one of the most commonly used means of communications these days. However, in all its instant speed of transmission, many still fumble with it, making it a less than ideal tool due to erroneous mistakes when it comes to crafting an e-mail.

Specifically, I've come across 3 big evils that e-mail users actually stumble over, and these actually cause so much confusion and delay that they negate the benefits of technology. They are (with pictures to boot):

1) Information Overload

Sometimes, due to the fact that we try to squeeze too many different, non-complementary ideas and notions into the same sentence or paragraph, readers become confused or in some casesirritated because they may not be able to quickly pick out key points atthe first glance when they are in a hurry or more commonly lose track of what the idea the sentence was trying to bring across at first just like this very sentence illustrates. Phew, get the point? I pretty much lost myself halfway there. Keeping things short and sweet is the way to go. Normally, I would try to avoid bring more than one key issue across in one message if possible. Also, the use of some structure like bulletpoints and lists help tremendously.

And yes, I do still get people who send me e-mails TyPeD iN aLtErNaTe CaPs, most possibly to irritate me. Normally I can't get pass the 2nd line without get a headache so off into the trash it goes.

2) Wrong Priority

This should be pretty obvious. Get the most important message across and cut out the rest of the distracting, non-important fluff. When in doubt if something is relevant to the e-mail, one can always just leave it out. Besides, shorter e-mails can be read much faster.

3) Ambiguity

Normally, you communication to ask for some action on from the receiver but how often do you wait in frustration when no reply comes? Chances may be that the receiver didn't get the message that something needs to be done. Did you just give a boatload of information without saying what it's for in the first place? Or worse, give conflicting ideas in the message and not say exactly what you want. Last time I checked, 99% of us weren't exactly psychics. So, the best thing is to have the last sentence of your e-mail in a seperate line that dictates what followup you are expecting exactly.

So avoid these mistakes like the plague to save everyones' time and to keep all those e-mail frustrations at bay!

[pics from : www.thisisbroken.com ]