In one of my writing classes in college, our final assignment was to write a paper summarizing and evaluating everything we had written over the course of the course. For a creative writing class, it seemed like a fairly dull assignment.
Thus, Col. Writingpen was created to guide my reader through the magical journey of my semester’s worth of papers. I always imagined him appearing out of thin air, like The Great Gazoo on The Flintstones, only dressed more like Col. Sanders.
Now that a good portion of my job consists of writing, I rarely take the time to assess my writing’s progress over the course of a few months or year, or years, even. In fact, most of my written materials probably get consumed and discarded in about the same amount of time it took me to write it – I am, of course, referring to email.
What is email? Did we stop to ask ourselves this as it quickly took over the world and our workdays? It replaces all kinds of paper products we used to entrust to the U.S. Postal Service. It replaces those “what time is the conference call” phone calls. Heck, it even replaces the conference call sometimes!
An article in the Wall Street Journal has already proclaimed email dead, slaughtered by Twitter and Facebook and the like – essentially even smaller, quicker forms of communication, only rather than having to fill in those tedious email addresses, your note gets automatically blasted across the universe. For day to day projects, there are even project management tools that replace those “status update” types of emails.
Essentially, we have more communication tools to choose from than ever before. Select the right one, and technology is your best friend, making your daily tasks melt away like butter on hot mashed potatoes.
Select the wrong tool, and you might start to feel the wheels spinning in mud. We all know someone who does this. The person who picks up the phone for EVERYTHING. The person who says “email me your question” and then never responds. The person who posts their thoughts on paperclips and love of Fridays on Facebook. All these tools are rife for abuse!
We at Lilja probably think about these things much more than the average person, being communications professionals. It’s not uncommon for us to have a conversation debating what tool to use in a particular instance.
What do you think? Is email overused? Are there other, more effective tools that you use in place of email? What would Col. Writingpen say?
-- Alicia DeMatteo
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4 comments:
A fascinating point. Texting replacing phone calls is another example of a new communication tool. When I need to check on a quick fact, I'll text instead of call. But longer conversations always default to a phone call rather than texting.
A follow-up question: does each form of communication have its own grammar and syntax rules? When I instant message, I tend not to use capitalization or punctuation. But when I email, I always do, and find it frustrating when others don't. A grammatical double-standard?
As communications professionsals, do you have similar discussions with your clients? For example, would you recommend a certain communication tool in a given circumstance? I agree that you probably think about it more than most. I think I almost default to email because so much of my job is done at the computer to begin with.
An interesting topic to say the least.
I think that the Wall Street Journal's proclamation of the demise of e-mail is a bit premature... but I also suppose it depends on the context in which you couch it.
E-mail in the daily individual's life, I agree, has been greatly reduced by the recent upswing in social media such as Facebook or Twitter... but that said, I think you'd be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't use e-mail in their personal life for something.
Texting, Twitter, Facebook, IM (of any kind) have their place; and if nothing else has only shown how resilient e-mail is, specifically as a business tool.
Consider this... Look at which tool you use to communicate with someone and then consider how proportional it is to how important the information is for the person to retain that information for later accessing.
Chances are, if you want them to be able to hang on the information or be able to call it back up at a later date, you E-mail them; whereas if what you need is only relevant in the here and now and can be discarded after the conversation has ended, then I'm guessing you'd use one of the more instant forms of communication.
There is something I've seen that MAY come close to sub-plating E-mail is Google Wave.
Google Wave (for those that haven't seen it) is what you would get if you mashed E-mail, IM, and Forums into a single entity.
Wave is still in its infancy and has a LONG way to go if it's going to truly supplant E-mail as the primary method of communication in the business world, but it at least has the capability of doing so unlike any of the instant forms of communication.
As to MKC_Lilja's question about grammar and syntax: I don't think you're alone in your frustration. The development of shorthand for texting or Twittering can be traced to its limitation in the number of characters you can use in a single communication.
As for the lack of grammar and use of shorthand in IM stems from it being A) Viewed by most as more casual form for communication, and B) As it's instant, most are trying to type information as fast as they can and send it not taking time to proof read what they've written for sake of keeping the tempo of the communication up. All of these I believe are understandable and acceptable in their individual contexts.
In the case of E-mail or Forum posts however, I share your frustration; I feel that these are places where your messages should be thoroughly thought out and proof read before hitting the "send" button.
Thanks for all the feedback on this post! I may have to do a follow-up piece to address it all.
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