Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Week 5, Ensuring your email messages are professional

Read this article on email characteristics identified as pet peeves by a career planning consultant at http://stress.about.com/od/officepolitics/a/emailpeeves.htm The link should take you directly to the article. If it takes you to a list of articles, click on the one titled “Simplify your workday: 27 email pet peeves.”

After reading the two page article, what are your thoughts? What is your pet peeve about emails? Which one listed do you see the most? Have any emails you’ve received recently (or sent) been particularly unprofessional? If so, describe them.

26 comments:

  1. I think that these tips are very good to know when working in a professional setting. It is good to know all of this also when sending e-mails from home that are less formal.I hate when I recieve tons of unimportant e-mails more then twice a day.All they do is take up space and waste my time by going through and deleting them. One thing also that I have seen myself doing is when having an attachment I sometimes forget to put text within the body of the e-mail itself. With sending assignments that can be a huge problem. Just for the simple fact that the instructor recieveing the e-mail with attachment may not know that there is even an attachment.
    It is very important that we all must take these tips into consideration. It will cause less problems for everyone!

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  3. The article made some really good points about what not to do to ensure your e mails are professional. Some of my pet peeves are when people send me junk mail that has pages and pages of e mail addresses, and no real message. Another one of my pet peeves is when people send notifications or important information last minute. An example I have of this is when I worked at a hospital in LaCrosse, I went to work especially for a meeting that had been canceled that same day. If an employee is not working, how in the world would they know that information when we could not access our work e mail from home?

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  4. This article was helpful in understanding how to send professional emails. I must admit, I do catch myself being sloppy quite a bit in sending emails. I don't find them annoying when I send them, but when I receive them it's a whole different story. My biggest pet peeve is when I get those messages saying that the company has received input from me, and they will get back to me with the response as soon as they are able to make a decision. Why can't they just get back to me in the message they sent me to inform the receipt of it? After a while, I just don't even want to open those messages anymore. It is basically a waste of time, in my opinion of course.

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  5. The article brings up many valid points about sending professional emails. It is also a very good reminder to keep by a work desk; we can all get sloppy from time to time. One of my pet peeves in a business or professional email is when people open with 'hey'. 'Hey' is fine when you are talking with your friends, but in a business email it should begin with 'Hello' or 'Hi'. I had just received an email on Friday informing me that my meeting that day was cancelled. This email would have been effective if it was sent more than 15 minutes before the meeting.

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  6. I find that the article was very helpful in understanding emails. Like many others, I to find myself sending out unprofessional email's with mistakes all the time. I find it annoying when professional companies send out email's that they mark important, and then you have to go to two other sites to reach what they want you to read. I believe it is a waste of time, and that they should just put the information in begining email.

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  7. I find this article to be very interesting in understanding that emails should look and sound professional, whether it's for business or personal use.
    As for pet peeves, don't get me started. I can relate to almost every one listed in the article. One of my biggest pet peeves is when someone forwards an email to you saying something bad will happen to you if you don't send it on to a number of your contacts. Another is when you go to read the forwarded email and you have to scroll through others' contacts before you can see the contents of the email. I could go on and on.
    My most recent email sent to me, I recognized the sender's address but there wasn't a subject line. I always feel like deleting it without ever opening it, but I don't, just because I know who sent it. When I see other people's sloppiness in emailing it makes me more aware of not doing that same thing when I'm sending out an email.

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  8. I loved the article about pet peeves when e-mailing. I get these e-mails through work all the time. One time my boos e-mailed all of us the monthly budget. First of all, I've never in four years seen a budget, so why now? Second, not sure what it was she wanted us to do with it? My boss is also guilty for e-mailing attachments without a body. Again, what is this? I can't stand this, and I'm even getting paid to read them. What a waste. She needs to stop hitting the "reply to all" ASAP, as some of these do not apply to all. One of the worst, work, e-mails I received was a chain mail e-mail. Our lead forwarded it, and it was something about good luck...Not even really sure. I actually told her to never send me those things again. I found that very unprofessional, and it was all of the "big wigs" who started it. Come on, is this what you get paid to do?

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  9. There were many on the list that bother me. The main one for me is forwards. I don't think my "luck" will be good or bad depending on how many people I forward the message to. This is ridiculous. I have also been sent many hoaxes over the years. I was very happy to see the author gave the website information to check on these. I have used Snopes a lot and I encourage everyone to do the same. I haven't received any recent unprofessional e-mails. I do have several people who e-mail me a personal message from work which bothers me. I just hope they are on a break when they are doing it.

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  10. I don't use email at work very much, but I always try to use the same rationale as when speaking. Think first. My two biggest pet peeves are when people send you angry emails reprimanding you for something you did. Also when people send emails rather than talking to you face to face. I have found the two usually go hand in hand. It is always easier to say what you are really thinking when you don't have to worry about seeing how it affects the other person. I know that I will try very hard to avoid becoming to reliant on email as my primary form of communication with anyone. I think it is too impersonal.

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  11. I believe that all business e-mails should be professional sounding and slang should not be used. Most e-mails are sent out to inform and some are for fun. I myself, have sent out my fair share of both. The biggest pet peeve on the list that I have is the last minute cancellation e-mail. People should use a phone if they are going to cancel at the last minute, it saves everyone time and gas if they have to travel. A lot of e-mails I have gotten have carrots (>>>) in them, those annoy me as well.

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  12. I think this article pointed out a lot of pet peeves. Most of my pet peeves are on there. The one I hate the most is the one about the subject line that doesn't match the message or the ones that do little to let you know what the message is about. There’s one pet peeve I always do. It’s the one called no response. My boss sent me a e-mail once and I did not responded because most of them are notification but this one required a response, so my boss wasn't too happy next the day I saw her.

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  13. I think this article pointed out a lot of pet peeves in e-mails. I don't use e-mail much unless it is to talk to my family in different states so being professional doesn't matter to them. One of my pet peeves is when people send me a forward yet all that is in the e-mail is other people's e-mail addresses.

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  14. It was good to see all of the pet peeves that people experiance with emails. This information was helpful to me,because I see myself doing some of them and it will help me personally. The one that I hate is that getting a response email stating that you requested something and you really do not know what they are talking about. Like if you visit a certain website, then you information is pasted on and you get all of these promational things. What a waste of time. A person has to take the time to delete them and if they do not want the take the time to unsubscibe to that companies emailing list.

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  15. This article really pointed out a lot of pet peeves that I really hadn't thought about. After reading this article, the two pet peeves that really stood out the most and really annoy me, are the ones that you will get an attachment and no body to explain what the attachment is about. The second one that bothers me, is the last minute cancellations some people are just way to lazy to pick up the phone, to give you a call and let you know that the meeting or whatever it may be has been canceled. Sometimes I don't always have time to look at my e-mails to find these things out. I haven't received any e-mails lately that have not been unprofessional.

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  16. I thought this article was very useful. Emails are very important in today society. They need to sound a look professional; otherwise the recieve will not take you seriously. Pet peeves of mine are when people send pointless forwards. I am too busy to have to spend time deleting them. Also I don't like it when there is no subjct for the email. When this happens I have to look at the email and again I don't have much patients for that.

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  17. This is a good article for anyone who has experienced any of these pet peeves. I say this because I'm sure many people out there have received weird e-mails, or e-mails with bad subject lines. The two e-mail pet peeves I dislike the most are the abusive e-mails and when people don't respond accordingly. In my main e-mail account I have signed up for various band newsletters to stay informed but through that I've received countless e-mails for another website to download all their shows. Also the no response really gets to me because sometimes you need to know something, and if e-mail is your only way of communication with the other person it can be very frustratin.

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  18. In reading this article I can agree with everything that was said about e-mails. However, my biggest pet peeve is when people do not respond to an e-mail. This has happened to me before. There are certain e-mails that are sent and received that do not require a response. But, when they do require a response, there needs to be a response. My biggest problem with a “non-response” is that it is disrespectful and it shows the sender that you don’t care. If a person sends you an e-mail it obviously means that they took time to write it, and I think that you should take time to respond.

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  19. This article was interesting, I didn't realize that all these things go on in e-mails. When I send out an e-mail message I try to have it be professional. I really don't use my e-mail very much at all. The only time is to e-mail my instructors, and I don't have close friends to e-mail. I use my telephone more. The ones that would be annoying to me are: when a person would create shortcuts for words, this seems to be lazy to me. Bad grammar also annoys me because a dictionary can be kept by your computer. The last minute e-mail is not very respectful to the other person. People usually have a schedule to follow everyday and this would really mess up their plans.Also complex issues should be carried out on the telephone in my opinion.

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  20. After reading it, I thought that she was a little too picky, but then I thought about situations I have been in. This doesn't have only to do with emails, but I noticed it a lot on my phone when people would text message me. She calls it cute shortcuts on her list, but I call it text lingo. It seems like everyone that texts me, can't fully spell a word. They always use abbreviations, or numbers to shorten up the word. I get this a lot in emails and it drives me nuts. I don't understand why people can't just spend the extra two seconds it takes to fully spell a word. Also another pet peeve I learned I have is when people abuse emails or text messages. I mean they abuse it to the point where they are trying to have a full conversation by sending one line of the conversation at a time. That drives me nuts, and that is when I usually just pick up the phone and call the person.

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  21. After reading this article, I thought it was very interesting and had many good points. I see all of these quite often when I am reading my e-mail. When I am at work it gets really bad. If we send them a quote, many people will send back “Thanks”. It is a waste of my time even opening that message. Many people should read her article to they stop doing little things that drives people crazy.

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  22. I use to receive email from people I didn’t know that was Dirty Emails. Back in high school, my friends use to love sending those. I never read them because they were so messy and confusing. At my work place, our department will sometimes receive an email that is in all caps. That was very hard to read. The manager sent out an email letting everyone know that emailing in all caps was complicated and to try to avoid it.

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  23. I thought the collection of pet peeves was very good. They are a big problem and need to be addressed. People can be very careless with their emails. Some of the pet peeves don't annoy me that much. I get really frustrated with chain emails, especially the emails that say something will happen to you if you don't pass them on. I also get really peeved with emails that do not concern me. I get those at work quite a bit. I don't like sorting through emails that don't have anything to do with me.

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  24. I agree with most of these pet peeves for emails. I do not like to get dirty emails, most of them I just delete because it could be a virus from a nasty sight or something. I also do not like it when people try to solve issues through email. I believe things like that should be solved through the phone,it could be solved faster and you won't get a wrong impression that you could possibly get through an email. This can especially happen with important issues. I also do not like when i sign up for things and it asks for my email for just some random special offers. Most of my emails end up being things like that, they send out like 5 different special offers and updates a day. These are some of my major pet peeves.

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  25. I believe email etiquette is very important in the workplace. I had to laugh at some of the pet peeves. At my work, we email daily. I can honestly say I don't have many issues with the emails I receive from my co-workers. The emails I receive are to the point and clear and the correct people are included in the emails to my knowledge. One pet peeve I do have is receiving emails from people who do not have my permission to send me their spam or email marketing campaigns. One day a sales rep from a local company in town met with our marketing director. This sales rep was introduced to me and my marketing director gave her my business card to contact me for a business leads group. However, she turned around and started using my email for her email marketing campaigns. I was not too impressed with this company. First of all, this sales rep was introduced to me but we never had a conversation about her company. I was a little upset to receive these frequent emails.

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  26. I thought this article was very informative about the many types of "Pet Peeves" that can be associated with emails. The article has taught me any ways in which to send and not to send professional emails. It taught me a lot of good points to keep in mind when sending out a professional email.
    I think that one of my biggest "Pet Peeves" is when the email states you have to send it to x amount of people or you will have bad luck. Another one that bothers me is if you have a complex problem and it could be solved much easier by just picking up the phone and calling the other party.

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