A few notes on communicating in the "digital" age

I was reading a document that was created by a high school student the other day. And my thought, which has been recurring for some time now, was - don't they teach English in our schools any more?

Of course, they do. I have many friends who are teachers and they work very hard. It's not their fault. What I believe might be to blame, at least partly, is the device you are using right now to read this fabulous blog.

The internet has many wonderful things to offer. One of those tools is the electronic mail (email) system we all use today. However, instant messaging, chat rooms and text messages have changed the way we write. In our professional lives, it remains important to write well, even when sending email.

So, here are a few tips that I remind myself of from time to time before I hit the send button:

• Start with your salutation. For example, if you are sending an email to John, begin the e-mail with John (followed by a comma, hyphen or colon), then skip a line and start the body text of the e-mail. It isn't necessary to begin with a Dear John. It is a good idea, however, to avoid using the familiar Hey, Bob or Hi, Bob or Yo, Bob as your salutation.
• Capitalize the first word of each sentence. We were all taught this in elementary school, but e-mail has encouraged some unfortunate writing habits, and this is one of the worst.
• Know when to use contractions. Acceptable contractions include you're for you are, isn't for is not and it's for it is. Not acceptable are those new instant messaging abbreviations such as u for you, lol for laughing out loud and 2 for two/too. Also, avoid abbreviations like thx for thanks. The same goes for e-hieroglyphics like :).
• NEVER USE ALL CAPS. It's as though you're yelling at the reader.
• Avoid overusing the exclamation point!!!
• Always close the e-mail with a complimentary closing. That is, a closing such as Sincerely and a signature. Also, unless you are on a first-name basis with your reader, always use your first and last name in the signature, including your title and telephone number. Most email programs offer a standard signature option. This will save you some time.
• Whenever possible, have someone proofread your e-mail. This is a good habit to adopt even for the shortest e-mail messages. We're human, so unintentional mistakes are inevitable. Take a second to run the spell-checker. And watch out for common grammatical mistakes such as subject-verb agreement errors.
• If no one is available to proofread your writing, the best thing to do is to read your e-mail out loud. You'll be surprised at how often you can catch those annoying little errors just by reading your writing aloud.

Thx.