I have a favorite Hawaiian shirt I wear around the house on weekends. It's comfortable and holds great memories. Yet there's no way I would wear it to the office tomorrow morning. It's just plain inappropriate. Well the same is true for business communication.
Some people will tell you that verbal shorthand is okay in informal written communication, like email, because it makes things go faster. They are wrong. It slows things down because of the frequent need to seek clarification. In our rush to save time we sometimes waste even more time. Sloppy, poorly-written emails that require follow-up with additional emails or phone calls just to be understood have become a major time waster in business today. Business Email Is Not A Teenage Chat Room details the problem and explains how you can keep this time waster from sucking up more of your time.
Email in general is an efficient way for communication especially when you think you might be misunderstood when trying to say what you want to say in the email orally.
Communicating through emails – Serious? Communicating through emails can be the most challenging form of communication. Once you hit submit from your laptop/iPhone/cell phone/PDA it seems so final and without a true sense of emotion. Sure, you can CAP ALL LETTERS TO MAKE A POINT, but what does that mean? Can you capture what the sender is really trying to say, OR, is it just information left up to the sender to figure out what the emotion behind the words typed really mean.
How about spelling – misspelling a woord can really throw the reeder off and compleetely ruin an otherwise great thought.
Taking this one step further – is this (emailing) destroying the real art of communication or is it a necessary evil that we must continually get better at?
A former boss once said that e-mail is a great way to exchange information but it’s a lousy way to communicate.
I’ve always remembered that and it has served me well.
Without being able to see (or hear) someone’s reaction to your words you run the risk of creating a huge misunderstanding which inhibits communication.
I agree with Scott, true communication by e-mail is very difficult.