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Tuesday 12 April 2011

Politeness in emails

This weeks programme left me wondering:


  • Is the Hi greeting (or any other greeting) necessary? 
  • Is even the name of the addressee necessary?
  • Are they functionally unnecessary but desirable on ground of politeness?

  • Is there a functional reason for a valedictory phrase at the end?
  • Is there a politeness reason?
  • Do we even need a signature in informal emails?

  • How formal can emails be?
  • Are there any messages that still must be sent by letter?
  • How (if at all) should we address companies in emails?
  • Can we write to the anonymous holders of jobs, the way we do in letters?

  • If told that there is an etiquette for emails, should we take any notice?

9 comments:

  1. Hi David,

    I've read that a complaint always carries more weight when written and posted. Certainly City of Edinburgh Council respond to emails by written letter whatever the source.

    But now I dicover that the Public Service Ombudsman's office are geared up for electronic submission of complaint and supporting documentation. I wonder if the response will be 'electronic' too.

    I think email (and text) standards have migrated to letter writing too. Commas are fast disappearing.

    Cheers

    Mal(agrowther)

    ReplyDelete
  2. Mal

    EFL materials for teaching business letter writing do tend to recommend 'light' punctuation.

    ReplyDelete
  3. A written letter had a structure and layout formed by convention, and this was mostly adhered too. Every element within it had a function; the home address, the date, the signature and so forth. However the 'Dear Sir/ Yours faithfully' were malleable elements that one might tailor to suit the nature of the letter. They served little more function than the shaking of hands upon meeting others. Over all, I believe letters did have, and still should have, a visual appeal. Thus the layout has some importance, an aid in conveying the inner message. Obviously true for a job application, no less true in a love-letter.
    Thus I think if an e-mail is an acceptable alternative, a similar set of guidelines ought to apply.
    What is put down on the screen needs to be the practical information necessary. This probably does not include the postal address, but does include the date. Oddly, I think the valedictory phrases are more necessary in an e-mail than they are in a letter. A letter is a physical entity, an email not. It's pretty obvious where a letter ends, short of the sender omitting the final sheet, but with composite on-screen 'chain-mails', where one adds his bit and sends it back, ad infinitum, I certainly find it rather confusing to discern where the end is, and oft-times where it begins. Whether the salutations are of the 'Hi' style, or the 'Most affectionate friend' variety, is of little consequence. They merely serve as a practical form of punctuation that was not necessary in a letter. The nearest equivalent would be like saying "over!" on a walkie-talkie; "I've finished, it's your turn now".
    Also, I do for the most part try and achieve a visual harmony in an e-mail, and such organisation of style is aided by the potential tools at the keyboard; letter-writing relied on personal skills of penmanship, (or the limitations of a typewriter, I suppose) whereas the computer can perform tricks at the press of a mouse; you want it in italic? No problem! A different layout?
    Certainly!
    So self-disciplinary guidelines, yes, but rigid rules of formality, no. I do not feel the need to force an e-mail etiquette, to consult the style-guide as it were. But it is gratifying to note when people have made an attempt to get an e-mail to work in a visual way; however, I'd be thankful if the unbelievable laziness of 'they who cannot be bothered with a shift-key or spell-check' would take what seconds it does to exploit these sorts of tools and make their writings a little more understandable.

    ReplyDelete
  4. <<• How (if at all) should we address companies in emails?
    • Can we write to the anonymous holders of jobs, the way we do in letters?>>

    Whether in an email or a letter, I would find it beyond my own sense of politeness to omit the addressee and a salutation. I get round not having a named recipient by marking the email as addressed to the manager of the department concerned, followed by a suitable salutation, e.g.
    “The Customer Service Manager
    Dear Sir or Madam”

    In the rare case where it is necessary (e.g. for legal reasons) to address the email to the company or organisation itself, I will still put the organisation’s name at the head of the email.

    ReplyDelete
  5. HM-J:
    <<...you want it in italic? No problem! >>
    That's all very well until someone in the response sequence uses plain text mode. Then all formatting in the previous emails is lost. Only capitals survive. This often happens when someone uses a smartphone or the like to respond. I have sometimes been moved to reconverting the conversation to HTML mode and putting all my bold/italics/underlines back in in my earlier messages, just in order to retain their proper sense. The only alternative is CAPITALS, but there will always those who consider it shouting. This is the same difficulty we had on the last incarnation of the BBC messageboards.

    ReplyDelete
  6. And I haven't found out how to enter formatting on this blog. How is it done?

    ReplyDelete
  7. Attila

    Before I answer your substantial points, some notes on formatting:

    Remember the BBC < q u o t e > ... < / q u o t e > without the spaces? You do the same for

    italics with i in stead of quote

    bold with b instead

    bold underline with one pair of tags inside the other:
    < b > < i > ... < / i > < / b >
    or
    < i > < b > ... < / b > < / i >

    I don't know of a pair of tags for underline.

    You can insert a link thus:

    < a href = " http:www.etc " > your own text < / a >

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hugh

    The distinction between British Yours faithfully and Yours sincerely in Britain, as with the US equivalents, was an arbitrary convention. Indeed it was pretty arbitrary to include any closing valediction. However, the conventions of salutation were developed with a very specific function in mind.

    I worked this out when trying to analyse the very different conventions of military 'letters'. The most common type has no salutation because it isn't addressed to a person but to whoever is responsible in the organisational unit addressed. The equivalent in business correspondence is Dear Sir or the equivalent

    Dear Sirs
    Dear Madam
    Dear Sir or Madam
    Gentlemen!


    This is sometimes explained as You don't know the name. It should rather be a case of Never mind the name, give this letter to whoever is responsible.

    I suppose the point of the closing valediction was perhaps:

    Yours faithfully (or US equivalent) was the default

    Yours sincerely (or equivalent) reflected that there was a personal, albeit formal nature to the transaction

    • any departure from Yours sincerely reflected a genuine personal connection


    You stress the value of the opening salutation. Yes I see the point if you know who you're writing to. But what if it's an email to Microsoft? Or to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs? Dear Sir etc were included only in communications with a business letter format — presumably because it would look like a letter without something in that slot. There was no equivalent in any other form of correspondence that I can think of — not in standard military 'letters', not in memos, and not necessarily in faxes, telegrams, circulars.

    Why put the date in emails? Surely that is done by the software?

    And how does you text interrelate with the Subject? Do you repeat it or refer to it?

    ReplyDelete
  9. Attila

    I get round not having a named recipient by marking the email as addressed to the manager of the department concerned, followed by a suitable salutation, e.g.
    “The Customer Service Manager
    Dear Sir or Madam”


    In other words you write an email exactly as you write a business letter. That's certainly a safe policy. And if I really thought the was such a person as The Customer Service Manager, I might use the address. As I said to Hugh:

    But what if it's an email to Microsoft? Or to Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs?

    Microsoft is a bit big to have one customer service manager, and as for HMRC...

    In the rare case where it is necessary (e.g. for legal reasons) to address the email to the company or organisation itself, I will still put the organisation’s name at the head of the email.

    This puzzles me. A letter and its envelope can easily become separated, but the To: of an email is integral. Is it just that you want emails to look like letters? Or do you see the omission as somehow discourteous?

    ReplyDelete