Corporate Email Etiquette - Dead or Alive?

mbravo writes "I work in a largish company, heavily into IT, and in a complex and quickly changing market. Employees are predominantly in the 30 or younger age-bracket, and as you might expect we rely on a lot of internal e-mail. Despite that, lately I'm finding myself increasingly frustrated by a complete lack of e-mail etiquette in the company. A typical thread might look like a hundred-message-long chain of one-line replies, with full quoting and hundreds of recipients in the 'To:' field. It feels like it is happening more and more often. I don't seem to be seeing much success in explaining to my co-workers what the problem is here. How do you deal with this at your place of business, and does your company care? Does the company take any policing or educating measures?"

Spelling and Grammar

[KermodeBear]

I just wish that my co-workers could learn to spell and use decent grammar. Not would, could.

Re:Beware of Litigation!

[orclevegam]

I would rather have a long chain of evidence that protects me personally, so when the shit hits the fan and ligitation starts, I have something to prove that it did not happen due to my incompetence.

I avoid e-mail whenever possible, so that when the shit hits the fan they can't even prove I was in the office.

Re: Corporate Email Etiquette - Dead or Alive?

[phobos13013]

no

{Unclassified}

-----Original Message-----
From: [e-mail]
Sent: January 22, 2008, 10:39AM
To: [e-mail]; [e-mail]; [e-mail]; [e-mail]; [e-mail];
Subject: Corporate Email Etiquette - Dead or Alive?

"I work in a largish company, heavily into IT, and in a complex and quickly changing market. Employees are predominantly in the 30 or younger age-bracket, and as you might expect we rely on a lot of internal e-mail. Despite that, lately I'm finding myself increasingly frustrated by a complete lack of e-mail etiquette in the company. A typical thread might look like a hundred-message-long chain of one-line replies, with full quoting and hundreds of recipients in the 'To:' field. It feels like it is happening more and more often. I don't seem to be seeing much success in explaining to my co-workers what the problem is here. How do you deal with this at your place of business, and does your company care? Does the company take any policing or educating measures?"

Re:Get gmail

[TheRaven64]

Yes, sending confidential commercial information via a third party is an excellent recommendation and one I fully endorse. I also suggest you use MSN Messenger for shorter conversations.

You have to be stern

[Quiet_Desperation]

How do you deal with this at your place of business

Beatings and electrocutions. It may work differently outside the gulag, but I wouldn't know.

We're experimenting with other methods. Here's a picture [theseventhvoyage.com] of our recent IT hires. We give them free reign in deciding disciplinary actions.

Re:Spelling and Grammar

[gEvil (beta)]

I just wish that my co-workers could learn to spell and use decent grammar.

Yeah, taht's my biggest complaint. They should of learned grammer in school.

Re:Different tool

[hansamurai]

That's a really good idea.

This text added to reach the 100 character minimum so that it isn't marked as spam.

Re:The problem

[Anonymous Coward]

mbravo waited. The lights above him blinked and sparked out of the air. There were problems in the email. He didn't see them, but had expected them now for years. His warnings to his coworkers were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway.
mbravo was an it worker for fourteen years. When he was young he watched the mailing lists and he said to dad "I want to be on the mailing lists daddy."
Dad said "No! You will BE KILL BY PROBLEMS"
There was a time when he believed him. Then as he got oldered he stopped. But now in the cubicle farm of the UAC he knew there were problems.
"This is Joson" the radio crackered. "You must fight the problems!"
So mbravo gotted his palsma rifle and blew up the wall.
"HE GOING TO KILL US" said the problems
"I will shoot at him" said the cyberproblem and he fired the rocket missiles. mbravo plasmaed at him and tried to blew him up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill.
"No! I must kill the problems" he shouted
The radio said "No, mbravo. You are the problem"
And then mbravo was an outlook express.

Re:Beware of Litigation!

[hraefn]

I avoid e-mail whenever possible, so that when the shit hits the fan they can't even prove I was in the office.

I avoid going to the office whenever possible, so that when the shit hits the fan I don't get shit all over me.

Re:Beware of Litigation!

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not a camera, that's a cat.

Re:It's also a cause of the problem described

[Mr. Underbridge]

Gmail removes somethings that were an annoyance when I used pine/thunderbird, and now I just press "reply all" most of the times, and don't bother cleaning subject or to:/cc: fields.

On behalf of your poor coworkers...stop doing that. I can't stand the morons in my company that can't distinguish between the reply and reply all buttons. Second to that in annoyance is the people who indiscriminately send company wide emails.

Seriously. With about half a second of actual thought you can actually avoid clogging everyone else's inbox with crap.

But the "reply all" feature should reply to everyone in the discussion, not just to the ones that were included in the last email.

Actually, whoever came up with the reply all button should be tried for war crimes at the Hague.

Re:Part of the problem

[notorious ninja]

I like top posting. I want to see the message that is for me at the top, and not to have to scroll through a series of replies to get to where my message really begins. Plus, if it was relevant to me I've probably already seen it, although it's nice to have for context.

Re:Spelling and Grammar

[Anonymous Coward]

Grammar, too.

Yeah, and maybe some very basic analytical skills, like how to spot a joke.

Re:It's also a cause of the problem described

[smurfsurf]

So why don't you note these instructions down? If he speaks too fast, ask him to slow down, as you are writing it down so you don't miss a step. He will understand and appreciate it. It is your responsibility to get it right. If you can't remember everything and don't take notes, you rightfully get negative feedback about it. He is your boss, it is his choice of communication medium, you have to deal with it in the best way you can.

Re:It's also a cause of the problem described

[cthulu_mt]

Actually, I hate my phone and only answer it about 10% of the time.

Dad? Is that you?

Re:It's also a cause of the problem described

[toleraen]

Because they sign your paychecks?