It might make for difficult, embarrassing and familiar reading, but Will Schwalbe's new book on how to improve your e-mailing struck a corresponding chord with Nadine O'Regan.
Ask Will Schwalbe to name his favourite anecdote from his new book, Send: The How, Why, When - and When Not - of E-mail,co-authored with David Shipley, and the words and tales come tumbling out. The fact is, Schwalbe has heard too many stories of e-mail disasters to possibly pick just one.
"I love the fact that students actually write to the dean of admissions at Harvard with long, rambling e-mails about their alcohol-fuelled exploits," Schwalbe laughs. "I love the story of the dean of admissions at Berkeley law school who accidentally sent out an e-mail to every person who'd applied to law school - about 7,000 people - to tell them they'd been admitted.
"We also quoted one children's book author who got an e-mail from a little girl that said: 'I have to write a book report. Can you tell me what your book is about and what its major themes are?'" The list goes on and on.
E-mail: it might look like an innocent system, but that "send" button is frequently an express train to the dark lands of stalled careers, derailed friendships, embarrassments and relationship break-ups.
There are few office-workers out there who can't recall an e-mail that still makes them cringe with regret. E-mail is, says Schwalbe, the "most dangerous machine" in the office because it can make us so impetuous. It can also, often without our realising it, turn us into high-handed, bossy-sounding horrors. "We're all ruder on e-mail than we should be," Schwalbe says.
And because we use e-mail so regularly, we give ourselves multiple chances to mess up. Before 1983, there was no official internet. In 2007, trillions of e-mails are sent every week. Instant messaging and texting have become part of our daily work lives. In 2001, the Clinton administration had 32 million e-mails to hand over to the National Archives. By 2009, the Bush administration is expected to have more than 100 million electronic messages to file away for its permanent record.
Schwalbe, whose day job is as editor-in-chief at Hyperion Books, sends and receives about 200 e-mails a day - a circumstance he describes as fairly standard for a mid-level executive. Two years ago, it was his dissatisfaction with the quality of the e-mails he was receiving that led to the germs of the idea for Send. Schwalbe was lunching on oysters in Grand Central Terminal in New York with his friend, David Shipley, New York Times deputy editorial page editor, when, in the midst of a discussion about the terrible e-mails they had received and sent, they decided, Lynne Truss-style, to create their own rulebook.
"We wanted to do this book to make people realise that if they e-mail a little better, their whole life improves." In Send, Schwalbe and Shipley have two major guidelines for readers - "Think before you send" and "Send e-mail you would like to receive" - and myriad smaller ones.
"We have a four-part rule," says Schwalbe. "Will the person know what you're trying to do? Is the e-mail effective? Is the thing you want to say near the top of the e-mail? Is the e-mail necessary? Because if it's not, maybe don't send it. You're just creating work for yourself." Both authors are fans of the "Dear __" style of address. Shipley prefers to sign off with "Cheers" while Schwalbe favours "All Best".
Somewhat surprisingly, the authors like exclamation marks and emoticons - they're a "quick way to add friendliness", Schwalbe says.
They despise flags, however: "It's like someone marching into your office, taking a piece of paper and flapping it on top of your desk - it's really rude." Speaking of rudeness, Schwalbe says, "Never forward without permission, and assume everything you write will be forwarded." Reading the book, this reporter spent a fair amount of time wincing and nodding guiltily - trust me, no matter how much you think you know about e-mail, this book still has plenty to teach you.
"Many of the people this book is for are in denial," Schwalbe says. "People literally e-mail us to say, 'I thought everyone else in the world needed this book, but now I realise I do too.'"
To avoid making e-mail mistakes, the authors believe your best bet is a technique they call "mirroring".
"When in doubt mirror whatever correspondence you get," says Schwalbe. "If someone sends you an e-mail with an emoticon and you send back a formal e-mail, what you're telling them is that things aren't as friendly as they think they are. If someone sends you an emoticon, send an emoticon back. Would it kill you?" (For several emoticon-hating people this writer knows, the answer to that is probably yes.) "On the flipside, if you're constantly mailing someone emoticons and they send formal e-mails back, what they may be telling you is that they think the relationship is more formal than you do."
E-mail has another less immediately obvious hazard - it can make people feel like they're working hard when, in reality, they're accomplishing very little. "I may say to a colleague, 'I'm really interested in such-and-such an author. See if they want to do a book.' So they get on the e-mail and hit send and that's it, they're done. Two months later, you're like, 'Whatever happened with approaching that author?' They'll say, 'Oh, I sent them an e-mail.' Just because you sent them an e-mail doesn't mean it's going to happen."
E-mail problems that start out small can easily morph into major issues. "You might think e-mail is this casual, ephemeral thing, but you can do real damage with it," says Schwalbe. "If you're in charge of raising money for a hospital and you send bad e-mails, that means the hospital doesn't get the money. If I start work at your company and I send out a stupid, angry, offensive, obnoxious e-mail, it has the company's address on it, it can be forwarded to millions of people. All the dollars you spend on advertising and establishing a good name for your company, I, as an employee on day one, can bring crashing down."
COMPANIES, SEEING SCHWALBE'S and Shipley's point, have been ordering the book in bulk. "People are walking into bookstores and ordering 300 copies for their businesses," Schwalbe says. Inspired by the book, Schwalbe's British publishers Canongate have even created a new approach to e-mail in their offices. "They're doing e-mail-free Monday afternoons," Schwalbe says proudly. "E-mail them on a Monday afternoon and you'll get a bounce back saying 'We'll be back to you on Tuesday.'" The prospect of an e-mail-disabled office sounds, at least to this e-mail junkie, horrifying. But perhaps, in a world where people are increasingly as likely to suffer from e-mail as drug addiction, it's a healthy development. What does Schwalbe think the future holds for e-mail? "I think e-mail is here to stay - it will continue to be the dominant form of business communication. But right now we're still in that phase where people are overusing e-mail because it's the new thing."
Luckily for Schwalbe, this isn't a problem he encounters with such regularity any more. The publication of Send has had an unexpectedly positive effect on his work life. "Everyone I know is paranoid beyond all belief when they write me. I get fewer, better e-mails. People are being very careful and clear, they're using great subject lines and they're only e-mailing when necessary." He smiles. "The book worked for me."
Send: The How, Why, When - And When Not - of E-mailis published by Canongate
