With E-mail; Lazy is as Lazy Does

That pretty much sums up those who protest E-mail Etiquette Basics.

Recently there was a  comment here on my Blog from a visitor who was being honest about being lazy.  While they protested the actions of others, which were actually default software settings that the didn’t like, they then admitted they were too lazy to set their software properly to resolve the issue.

If you think about it, e-mail etiquette doesn’t take much effort or extra time. It is basically a thought process that includes not what you want to do at any given moment or how much time you want to spend, but also considering how your actions or lack thereof may impact those you communicate with.

It isn’t all about you because there is always at least one other person on the other side.

It doesn’t take much effort – minuscule at best — to:

• Remove addresses of strangers from forwards.
• Add a nice greeting to every e-mail.
• Hit the cap key to capitalize the first word of every sentence.
• To have your name display properly in the From: field.
• Type a “thank you” reply to someone who responded to an e-mail request or resolved a customer service issue for you.
• Search a site for the proper form to fill out based on the type of request you have.
• Search a site to see if the information you seek is there before e-mailing for help.
• Check for any typos or misspellings before you hit Send.
• Type a nice closing at the end of every e-mail request

These are just a few of the things I’ve seen in the past 48 hours that those who e-mailed me didn’t make the effort to include. All take a second or two to do and can make the world of difference in perceptions.

The only reason I can think of why anyone wouldn’t do these things is simply that they are being lazy. What say you?

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