Peer to Peer Magazine

86 PEER TO PEER: THE QUARTERLY MAGAZINE OF ILTA | FALL 2016 Tips on How To Improve Your Writing THE WORD ON WORDS In the summer issue of Peer to Peer, we talked about the no-man's land of email, that weird space between writing and speaking that researchers call "chaing." Problems arise when the loose rules of "chaing" clash with the important content of email. The weirdness begins when we hit "New Message/Email" and have to tell Outlook where to send this thing, whom to copy, whom to send another copy to without telling anybody else, and what this email is all about. Let's look at each. To: We click on "New Message/Email," and up pops a fresh "page," just waiting for us, the cursor blinking in the "To:" line. Blinking, blinking, blinking. How convenient. So easy. The cursor commands us, "Stick something in HERE! NOW!" So we do. We type an "r," and down drops our cache of all the people whose name starts with the leer "r." We track downward with our eyes and our cursor, and there it is, the email address we're looking for. We compose our message and hit "Send." Dagnabbit! In that nanosecond when the message is propelled to the recipient, we realize we hadn't properly reviewed the message. We'd been interrupted a dozen times while draing, and there's some garbage in there that was never intended for our recipient. We now have some 'splainin' to do. Here's the first trick that will save you agony and angst: Leave the "To:" line blank until you've finished and edited your email. If you are "Replying," cut the address of the sender and paste it into the body. When you know you are ready to hit "Send," cut it and paste it back in the "To:" line. I read long ago that for something to become a habit, we have to do it 27 times, so I would get started on this one now. Cc: Your firm might have a policy for whose name to put in the "To:" line and whose name to put in the "Cc:" line. I spent lile time thinking about Guess Who's Coming to Email (Act II of IV) by Gary Kinder intro by Randi Mayes Talk about your disruptive technologies! Email was highly disruptive when it was the new kid on the technology block; and it remains disruptive, interruptive, downright intrusive and seemingly inescapable. Learning better ways to use the tool goes a long way in alleviating some of the pain. Here's lesson two in Gary's four-part lineup.

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