No need for pronouns.

A romcom about the trials and tribulations of crafting the perfect message.

You use pronouns in your e-mail? Fool! I’ve learned to talk like this: “Think should do this…” Is this any quicker? No, absolutely not. Because in your brain, you’re still adding in the pronouns (eventually you probably translated that sentence to “I think we should do this”)—for the reader, they’re still there, and for the writer, you now have to consciously remember not to type them in the e-mail.

You probably do this anyway, because your superiors started doing it. So you thought, “wow—losing pronouns must be a step in the right direction toward mid-level management.” Well, you’re right. It is. But, might I remind society that pronouns were invented in part to shorten proper nouns. We’re shortening something, which on average, ranges from 1-3 characters to begin with. That’s like shortening John to Jack or Rob to Bob—it just doesn’t make that much sense when you think about it.

Abbreviations

I’ve also learned some great abbreviations: WRT = with regard to, IMHO= in my honest/humble opinion. That second one really threw me off when I first saw it. “Ummm, lol? WTF is that?” I sat there staring at it for what felt like 3 minutes. Then I googled it. No—he couldn’t have meant “in my honest opinion.” Surriously? Sure enough, it fit. Anyway, I throw that one around liberally now, in the hopes that I send someone else off on a confusing quest to figure out what I’m talking about. Because let’s be honest: abbreviations—at their heart—are about making your life easier and the person reading’s life harder.

Proofread.

Ha! She said “their” when she meant “they’re”! Oh em gee, classic Lemon. I’m totally going to forward it out to everyone I know so I can mock her. Or better yet, I’m going to call her out in front of everyone at the next staff meeting. God this is going to be great. I can’t wait for the public humiliation that’s about to take place. (And yes, I chose to make the person making this mistake a woman; I find it makes the example more believable; I tested it with “him” and it just didn’t resonate the same).

I actually think it’s more important to proofread for tone rather than mistakes in grammar (though while you’re at it, please do both). That’s because it’s all too easy to come across as angry or condescending in an e-mail. I take a number of approaches to make sure I sound like no one else other than Mother Teresa in my e-mails, by doing the following things:

• -Compliment sandwich! Find two very superficial things you liked about an idea/presentation (as hard as that might be) and smash it in between one piece of brutally honest feedback. Because our generation was raised with showers and showers of compliments, and we don’t understand the concept of constructive criticism. If you’ve applied this method correctly, they’ll forget the criticism and focus exclusively on the compliments (which sounds ineffective, but when their idea inevitably falls flat, you’ll have that e-mail thread to point back to as you yell “see, I told you so!” in their face during the quarterly performance reviews).
• -Emoticons: use them liberally. I feel so gay at the end of the proof reading process after adding one happy face followed by a winking face. “Am I trying to seduce my coworkers?” (answer: sometimes, yes). But they’re necessary, simply to soften the blow of the unnecessarily harsh criticism you just leveled on them 12 seconds ago. This isn’t an invitation to get super creative and add noses, eyebrows, or depictions of sexual exploitation; as far as I’m concerned, you have three options: happy, sad or winking. It’s my little way of adding a bit of light-hearted cheer to an otherwise depressing e-mail.
• -Exclamation points: they can make or break an e-mail. I try to use at least one, and only when it’s absolutely clear that the sentence they are attached to is happy and not angry. Never use multiple exclamation points for the same reason as the next point. Also, when it comes to question marks, using two of them for one sentence is just obnoxious and comes off condescending. Example: what were you thinking using two question marks (you jerk)??
• -DO NOT USE CAPS. Mr. Qwerty is probably rolling over in his grave right now every time Kanye West types an e-mail (Kanye: when you type exclusively in caps, you are no longer emphasize anything). Some people think it’s an effective way to highlight an important message. Nope. It is an effective way to convey screaming, though.

Bullet Points & Headers

People don’t read anymore. In fact, I’m surprised you made it this far. Actually, you probably didn’t.

But if you did (congratulations on wasting what could have been a productive 6 minutes of your life), it’s because of my fantastically innovative use of headers and bullet points. I’ve discovered that’s the only way to keep people engaged in these tough economic times.

Italics, bolding and underlining mid-sentence are absolutely not an effective tool—you come across looking like your Aunt who just learned how to forward chain mail. You know, the Aunt that also still uses AOL and has a bible verse in her signature line (amen for figuring out the signature line, though). You might as well change the font color, while you’re at it.

Coming up in the next addition:

• -how to appropriately sign off your e-mail without sounding like an Australian person
• -interpreting who your boss is talking to based on the position of your e-mail address in the “To:”, “Cc:” and “Bcc:” lines
• -And more…