Ray sent me this screenshot from a webinar on good email etiquette. I don't generally do screenshots here, but I could not resist the irony of such unprofessional bad writing in a presentation on how to write good emails. The seemingly random quotation marks are less offensive to me than the serious need for tightening. "go ahead and" is never meaningful, and here they use it twice in as many sentences. Awesome.
10 comments:
Wow. This makes me want to send an "unprofessional" E-mail to the author. But first, I must go ahead and appropriately make sure that I am the appropriate person to go ahead and send an appropriate response. The icing on the cake is that she answered the question "How do I..." in the imperative instead of in the first person. (Disclaimer: I'm assuming "she" because no self-respecting man would make a slide that looks like that. Also, no self-respecting man would respond to an unprofessional E-mail by writing what he would like to say on a word processor with no intent of mailing the message.)
I'm frankly most bothered by all the things running in the persons task bar.
People wonder why their computers run slower than when they were new (to the point of commercial services to "fix" the problem), and never consider that they have 9 items running in their taskbar (and likely some hidden spyware).
People... don't have applications start with Windows. Put shortcuts to programs you often use in convenient places, and have nothing start along with the computer. You'll be amazed how much faster everything runs.
Remember... just because you close AIM, doesn't mean AIM has returned access to all of your RAM (i.e. speed).
it's the question mark after "Do not 'escalate' the problem" that makes it special.
My question is: Are the rules different when you receive a "very unprofessional" e-mail, as opposed to one that is merely "unprofessional"? "Very" is another word that is grossly over-used.
I love this. I love it because I presented a webinar on email etiquette last week and I had a typo in a slide. Three people wrote to tell me that it ruined the webinar for them and I've been sick over it ever since. I teach that it's a matter of respect to re-read and I did, and still missed it. Thank you for allowing me to confess!
SpeakerSue.com SpeakerSueSays.com
Sue, I don't know if I qualify as a grammatical priest, but I think those people are a little bit too uptight over one fricking typo. You should be absolved. This slide rife with typos though, that's funny.
wow. that is sad on so many levels.
Thank you, Bethany! I, too, think it was a bit anal, and yet it's like the time (many years ago) I was evaluated poorly because my nail polish (red) clashed with my suit (coral). The entire way home, I thought they were nuts. By the time the plane landed, I felt differently. They gave me an important lesson - not to be my own distraction. It's a lesson I've tried to incorporate every time I speak. I should have checked and triple checked. But goodness knows, your comments are so appreciated! Thank you.
SpeakerSue.com SpeakerSueSays.com
Sue,
the best way to do a final edit is to have someone else take a look at your writing. You've been living with it for so long, it's harder to notice the typos.
I also blame poorly-written email and spam for the loosening of our spelling filters: "if u cn rd n nderstnd ths sntns..."
Those apps in the system tray are: Intel Extreme Control Applet, a laptop touchpad driver, windows update thing, network connection unplugged, and the other ones are most likely related to some sort of VPN.
Post a Comment