Saturday, December 13, 2008

Netiquette

Improper netiquette (that's Network Etiquette for all you living under a rock) can be really annoying. Sometimes I get perturbed when an email starts off, "hey u" and other times I feel like it's completely appropriate. It's hard for me to articulate when it's okay to write in text talk and when it's not. In professional communication, it's obviously unacceptable, but where to you draw the line with friendly emails?


Also, how do you sign your emails? You want them to be warm, but not too chatty; pleasant but not over the top. I find it frustrating to always be thinking of new ways to sign emails. I used "Thank you" for a long time, but that one bothered me, because it's not always appropriate to say thank you unless someone in someway deserves a thank you. It seems weird to say, "Hi, how are you? yaddah yaddah. Thank you."

Then I used "Take care" for awhile, but then I noticed that several of the people converse with via email regularly use that exact phrase and you can never respond with same catch phrase. Plus, I don't want to be the copy cat that steals email signatures. This leaves me in a predicament. What other salutations are left? Sincerely is too formal. Best is too short. What's left out there in email-sign-off-phrases land?

4 comments:

  1. I normally use something custom per person for personal emails and I change it up...I use movie quotes often too....I figure why stick to one thing for everyone. I guess it all depends on whom you are sending it too and what the message is about.

    I'm a truck driver so I don't have a professional email format...I tend to use that all too common "Take care," for ones that are more generic...

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  2. I always use "take care" because I do not know what else to use.

    I think text talk should only be used for texting. For a text, they count the number of letters used and that matters. If you go over a certain number, then it is charged as two texts. I know that you don't talk on AIM but it is the same way. When people use abbreviations for different phrases, most times, I end up asking "what does '(whatever)' mean?" If they would have just typed it the correct way the first time, then I would not have to ask!

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  3. I agree with you on that too... instant messengers and emails should be spelled out correctly.

    To reference what Jenn had stated in an earlier blog; I also think that people rely too much on spell check.

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  4. I find it very interesting how technology transforms language and communication. The question becomes, where is the line between ease and degradation of language? On the one hand, nobody wants to take forever to type every letter out when IM-ing but then society as a whole starts using LOL as a real word in the real world. Where does it end?

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