I am a good writer.  I have confidence in that.  I am not, however, a good communicator.  By phone, by email, my ability to clearly express myself is seriously compromised by the fact that I assume others can read my mind.  By nature, I tend to be a sweet person, whichtranslates to 'doormat' in the professional world,  so over the years I have hardened my business self.  Unfortunately I struggle to find a happy medium.  I expect others to work as hard as I do;  I expect them to meet deadlines; I expect them to check their work, and go the extra mile.  And if it doesn't happen,  I get angry.  And as the man said, "you wouldn't like me when I'm angry."

I am prone to sending out curt, blunt emails demanding an explanation, a resolution to the problem, a refund, or a 25 hour work day delivered with a humble smile and an apology.  Unreasonable?  Without question.  But perhaps they should have thought about the consequences before they failed to deliver what they promised.  The problem is, of course, that they never see it that way, and more often than not rather than finding a solution to move forward, we part company in a flurry of red emails and I vow never to work with them again.

It's not ideal, and I am the first one to admit that perhaps I need to address the way I communicate via email in the first place.

My ever-patient boyfriend now has me read my emails out loud to him when it is important that I convey instructions or questions clearly.  That process in itself is often a baffling challenge for me,  as I feel that to write the email that he dictates would be insulting the recipient's intelligence.  Surely one has to assume some kind ofindependent thought from other professional human beings?

Apparently not.

Jon Buscall wrote a post today that I was looking forward to reading entitled 'How to Email Without Offending.'  Eureka, I thought.  I'll find some tips on how to get my point across politely and clearly.  Alas, it seems that Jon (to his credit) has embraced what I am so reluctant to accept: that the majority of people just don't use those squidgy grey cells in their heads.  Is it apathy?  A lack of initiative?  Is it that they don't want to think about things, or that they don't care?  Whatever the reason, it seems clear that the age of Common Sense is truly dead, and that my other half is right to assert that I have to spell things out in an email as if I were explaining it to a child.

I am always stunned at how much people need to be spoon-fed the most basic information.  But looking through my stuffed inbox I can see several of the email crimes laid out in Jon's post. 

There are at least ten forwards, where the subject contains five instances of FWD:, twenty lines of others' email addresses, no personalization and no reason for me to read them.  Why in the world would one of my clients even think that he should send me a poem about the importance of hugs, which then threatened me with seven years bad luck if I didn't forward it on to twenty people within 30 minutes?  And if I did give him the impression that I didn't value a hug,  did he not consider that it might be a gross breach of privacy not to delete the email address of the person who first sent it to him?

(I know of one case where a disgruntled employee used a list of email addresses in one such random forward from her boss to exact a very embarrasing revenge.)

At least, if I am guilty of being a bit vague or too hard in my emails, I can feel smug that I have managed to include the recipient's name, a subject line, and hit spellcheck before sending it.