Getting to the Point

My default writing style is pretty much the complete opposite of that recommended for research papers or other professional and academic communication. My style is, for one thing, a lot less likely to stay on track. I like qualifiers and modifiers. I like a certain goofiness. I like tangents. I like parenthetical asides. I really like parenthetical asides. You can see only a hint of it by reading my previous blog entries but you still have no idea just how many I remove in the process of editing what goes up here. Also, I'm having a very hard time not adding one now.

This particular style works fine for, say, a blog where the essential purpose (whatever else we may claim) is to show off. It's not very useful in a term paper or thesis. I can adapt, however. I don't really have any trouble writing in the style required for such papers. I just don't do it here. Nor, and this is where I'm headed with this entry, do I use a particularly concise style in emails.

I became aware some years ago that my email style was not entirely compatible with the email-reading habits of some of my friends. Only recently, however, have I come to recognize just how prevalent this discord is and, perhaps more importantly, how much it obscures my real message for people with little time.

The first indication came through an off-hand comment from a friend about five years ago. She told me, "Oh I don't usually read your whole email." This was pretty painful for me to hear, although she had no idea. I think from her perspective it was equivalent of telling me "I never quite got around to reading that article you recommended," in other words no big deal. From my end, though, it sounded more like, "I know you've been talking earnestly for the last ten minutes, but I wasn't really listening." It hurt (and clearly still bothers me, to a certain extent) but I understood it wasn't meant to be insulting. It was a fundamental difference in the way the two of us saw email.

I don't just write emails, I craft them. I like writing. If you get an email of a significant length from me (and admittedly my threshold for "significant" is probably higher than most), odds are good that I spent too much time drafting, editing, and tweaking it to get that perfect "casually witty" look (It's sort of like the idea of "artfully mussed hair"). As I pointed out above, however, I have more recently begun to realize that all that "craft" can obscure my original purpose.

In the past few years, more of my friends have made similar comments to the one I mentioned above. It took me a little while, but I finally started to generalize the concept and to realize that, as much fun as I find long emails, my readers don't always feel the same way.

Recently I have also begun following a blog called "43 Folders" which offers advice on being more productive and working more efficiently. It has an Apple focus, so I skip large parts of it, but the general non-Apple stuff is pretty useful. It's helping with my studies already. A large section of this blog is directed at email processing and also at email writing. Seeing the other point of view described there, that of the person who has to comb through all the "casual witty" to get to the actual information in the email, helped me realize just why some people are not inclined to read my whole email.

I have begun now to be more careful of my emailing efforts. If I'm writing an email with a purpose I'm dropping the clever subject in favor of the informative subject. I'm replacing the cryptic-yet-enticing first line with a sentence detailing exactly why I'm sending the email. I'm also discarding all (well almost all) of the irrelevant comments and asides I usually stick in the main body and then I'm signing off with a specific declaration of what I'm asking of them. Recipients should find it easier to figure out why I sent the email, whether they need to read it, and what I expect in return if they do. Hopefully it will make things easier for all involved (maybe now people will actually send RSVPs to my invitations, but efficiency may not actually be the real problem there).

I should point out that this new approach only goes for purposeful emails. I have no intentions of reducing my rambling if I'm just saying hi (I'm not going to let efficiency suck ALL the fun out of my life). Also, almost all B&B emails are exempt (October 27th, mark your calendars). For those we've always had the summary at the end anyway, so people can just deal.

For the rest, though, I'm cleaning up my act.