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About Overcome Email Overload with Eudora 5
About Overcome Email Overload with Microsoft Outlook 2000
Other email material by Kaitlin Duck Sherwood: A Beginner's Guide to Effective Email Why I Don't Like Electronic Greeting Cards Humorous looks at email: The Dark Side of Web Publishing Hyphenate or not -- Email or E-mail?
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Chapter 7 - Reduce AmbiguityExcerpted from Overcome Email Overload with Eudora 5Copyright © 2001 Kaitlin Duck Sherwood
Ambiguous messages waste time. At best, your correspondents will need to ask for further information. This will add to the stack of messages you have to deal with: at least one more message to write, at least one more message to read. Worse, your correspondents might ignore the message. You'll have to send more email to get them to act. At worst, your correspondents won't realize that they didn't understand your message and will do the wrong thing. You'll have to spend more time (and email messages) trying to correct the situation. You might find that you have more trouble making your meaning clear in email than you do in other communications media. This is not surprising: you probably got lots of training on how to write paper documents, some on how to speak, and none on how to write email. Training on how to write paper documents won't, by itself, teach how to write email well. Centuries of improvements in printing technologies have led to variations in paper and typography styles. These differences can give clues to the content of the document: the Bickham Script font (Bickham Script) is for formal invitations while Greymantle (Greymantle) is for stories of elves and fairies. Email, by contrast, is so new that it doesn't have enough variation to give the same type of clues. Furthermore, because email messages move so quickly and are so easy to reply to, they tend to be dialogues like speech, not monologues like paper correspondence. Email has some similarities to spoken communication, but isn't exactly like speech. The printed word doesn't convey gestures, intonation, or facial expression. This means that knowing how to speak well also doesn't automatically mean knowing how to write email well, either. This chapter examines in further detail how email is different and how to properly convey your meaning. Provide Adequate ContextWithout adequate context--information about a message's environment or situation--messages are not as understandable. Consider the following newspaper headline:
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When your correspondents quote some of the previous message, they are much more understandable:
A common problem with lack of context comes from words that take the place of things that aren't mentioned in the message:
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I talked to them about it, and they want to see the other one before they make up their minds. |
Even if the writer quotes some of the previous message, the reader might still have to struggle to figure out what them, it, they, and the other one refer to.
While you need to avoid references to missing things in any kind of writing, it is a particular problem in email because it feels so much like a conversation. If you are responding to a message that you just received, it might feel like you don't need to explain what you're talking about. However, unlike a face-to-face conversation, you won't notice when your correspondent shifts his or her attention to other things. Your correspondent might have six hours of meetings between sending a message and reading your response.
Fortunately, you have a good chance of spotting potential problems by looking for certain types of words. Carefully examine your message for the following place-holding words and consider using more specific words:
Using pronouns for people or things that aren't explicitly mentioned is a very common problem:
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He said that he would give me a tour if you would lend him the keys. Could you get the keys to him by Saturday? |
Examine any pronouns carefully, particularly in your first three sentences, and replace any that are ambiguous:
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Ezra said that he would give me a tour if you would lend him the keys. Could you get the keys to Ezra by Saturday? |
Common names can be almost as confusing as pronouns. Chris might be Christine Olszewski, Christopher Chien, or Christiaan Phrockmeijer. (A friend worked at a place where ten percent of the employees were named Mike. There were a few groups that even had two people with the same first and last name.) Minor variations in spelling can also confuse people: which coworker is Ann and which is Anne ?
If you mention someone whose name is common, do at least one of the following:
Placeholders for concepts, like idea, data, and information are warning signs that your message might be too vague. Questions like this are difficult to answer:
Your correspondents will reply faster, more accurately, and more completely if you get rid of words that refer to concepts:
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Are there any Web pages about the history of practical jokes at the University of East Central Illinois' Hoopston campus? |
Here is a very imprecise word in cyberspace. Given that people can access their email from just about anywhere, here could be a workplace, a home, a hotel, or even an Internet cafe. There is even more ambiguous, since it refers to where you think that the receiver will read the message, not where the receiver does read the message. Be very specific when you refer to places.
Times and dates can also lose their meaning. Words like yesterday, today, tomorrow, last Monday, and next month are dangerous in email. Next Thursday might pass before your correspondents--or whomever they forward the message to--see the message. Although your messages contain the date and time that you sent them, that information might get lost when the message is forwarded. Thus, you should always spell out dates fully. Times should include not just am or pm, but also the time zone if there is any possibility of misunderstanding.
Typographical errors in dates are very easy to make, and can have disastrous consequences. It is a good idea to mention the day of the week. Then, if the day of the week doesn't match the date, your correspondent has a chance to notice that something is wrong.
Here is an example of a message with ambiguities in place, time, and concept:
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Hi - Can you come here for an informational meeting next Monday at 8? |
People will be more likely to come to the right place at the right time for the right reasons if the message reads as follows:
Putting information in a table can help the information stand out:
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Hi - Can you come to a meeting of the Rose Gardening Club? Ezra P. Snodwhistle will give a report on last month's meeting (5 Dec 2037) with the Pest Control Superintendent. |
Providing the appropriate context does no good if people don't notice it. In particular, people frequently don't pay close attention to the Subject: header. I once saw someone send a message like this to a large group of people:
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Please join us in celebrating Mabel's 45th birthday at Mama Del's! Appetizers at 5:30 PM, pizza at 6:00 PM. |
About a fifth of the people didn't notice the 2/6 in the subject header and wrote to ask the date of the party. The moral of the story: always repeat any important header information in the body of the message.
You need to be particularly careful about context in messages that are not responses to a previous message. Your correspondent can't look up the previous message, so you need to be very clear.
Questions are most likely to need more context. If there is something you don't know about or don't understand, you're more likely to be vague--which could frustrate your correspondent. You'd probably be frustrated, too, if you got messages like this:
Is this a question about the layout of the heating ducts? What type of wiring the system uses? What brand of controllers the system uses?
If you are going to ask a question--particularly of someone you haven't met before--you need to frame your question carefully. If your question is too broad or vague, your correspondent might ignore it, delay responding, or send it back to you with a request for more details. Be sure to answer the following questions:
Frequently, if you explain what you plan to do with the information, that will answer the first two questions implicitly. For example:
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The conference rooms on the seventh floor are either too hot or too cold. I'd like to reset the temperatures in all three conference rooms. |
The second message is better than the first, but it would be even better with detailed questions:
You can also be unclear if you don't explicitly say what you want to happen. In spoken conversations, the context usually makes it clear if you are expressing a desire, an opinion, a fact, an order, or a question. In email, it is not as clear. For example, look at the following message:
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From: Mabel Garcia <mabel@flossrecycling.com> |
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I was thinking about the report covers. Blue might be better than yellow. |
Why did Mabel send Jeff a message about the report cover colors?
Mabel's message would be clearer if she were more explicit:
Email shares many traits with verbal conversations; people give fast, short contributions that they can't take back. Because of the similarity, people tend to write exactly what they would say out loud. However, without the emphasis and pauses of spoken language, it is easy for your correspondents to interpret something differently than how you intended. This section will show how to use text to simulate vocal expressions.
Pauses in speech help to group together sets of words. The following might be perfectly understandable in speech, but is unclear in text:
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It's time for the annual summer picnic! Which menu option would you like: hot dogs with lime gelatin, or lasagna with corn on the cob or green bean casserole? |
Is the green bean casserole a main dish or a side dish that goes with lasagna?
While a standard use of commas can make such groupings unambiguous, the sender and the receiver have to both agree on what "standard use" is. In American English, a comma is optional after the next-to-last item in a list. Furthermore, poor understanding of comma rules is common.
It is much safer to use spaces, tabs, and carriage returns to make the grouping clear:
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It's time for the annual summer picnic! |
Some people like to make numbered outlines:
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It's time for the annual summer picnic! |
Numbered outlines do make things very clear, but they can encourage people to respond with just a number. If you send messages with numbered lists, be prepared for responses that look like this:
Repeating all the information takes more work, but is the clearest of all:
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It's time for the annual summer picnic! Which menu option would you like: + lasagna with corn on the cob |
An advantage of this last style is that it becomes very easy to quote the important part of the message. You're likely to get more concise and understandable responses:
In speech, emphasis helps eliminate ambiguity. For example, the following sentence is unclear without emphasis:
Am I conveying the message that I am hurt that you doubted my promise?
Am I clarifying that I'm not going to the garden?
Am I telling when I plan on going to the store?
It is true that I could rewrite the message to eliminate the ambiguity:
As I explained already, I can't go to the store today. I will go tomorrow.
However, it is easy to overlook that an ambiguity exists. It is generally obvious where you should put emphasis. You should add emphasis even if you don't think something is ambiguous.
While Eudora lets you put words into italics, your correspondent's email program might not be able to display them. (Make Messages Legible, explores the issue of differing presentation capabilities.) If you don't know what your correspondent's email program can display, it is far safer to use plain text. Instead of italics, you can show emphasis with asterisks. Thus the previous example could be written in email as:
Ambiguous messages waste time. Your correspondents will be more likely to understand and respond to your messages properly if you: