How to Write E-mail that Sucks: An Incomplete Guide
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E-mail is an essential part of the modern communications toolkit. If you want your e-mail messages to almost-but-not-quite-completely fail to live up to their potential, here are some tips you can follow at your own peril:
- Don’t bother with a meaningful subject line. Don’t write a subject like “Here’s the contract information you asked for,” “Agenda for staff meeting,” or “I need you to review the attached document.” Write a subject line like “Hi!”, or “Wazzup?” Even better, leave it blank. People love mysteries.
- Meander around for a while, telling some amusing anecdotes, or offering your thoughts on the performance of the team in the big game, or asking if the recipient saw Desperate Housewives last night, before getting to the point of your message.
- email is informal, so, like, things like speling punctuation grammer and standard english usage dont matter, you know?
- IF YOUR MESSAGE IS VERY IMPORTANT, PUT IT IN ALL CAPITAL LETTERS SO YOUR RECIPIENT WILL FEEL LIKE YOU’RE STANDING INCHES AWAY, SHOUTING, WITH YOUR SPITTLE SPLATTERING HIS OR HER FACE. BECAUSE YOU DO THAT IN REAL LIFE, DON’T YOU?
- If you’re not sure how… I don’t know… maybe if you… those dot-dot-dot thingies… they’re called ellipses… anyway, you can use them instead of doing the work of figuring out the best way to say what you want to say.
- Structure of any sort—paragraphs, bulleted lists, numbered lists, headings and subheadings—is overrated. Just dump everything into one big glob of text.
- Throw in lots of big, obscure words like obfuscation, disintermediation, and penultimate. Big words are a great way impress—nay, intimidate—people with your smartness. And they’re a lot less likely to question you if they can’t figure out what the hell it is you’re saying.
- If you’re replying to a number of questions, be sure to answer only a few of them. Leave the rest for people to figure out on their own. It’s good for them, the lazy slackers.
Your turn, dear readers. What are your favorite ingredients for sucky e-mails?
Roy Jacobsen
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Also make sure that there is at least 50MBs of some nice pictures attached.