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by David Johnson, AIA

Sometimes it's what you say and how you say it.

A couple of recent developments have me thinking overtime on the subject of electronic mail. Our firm just started work on a large interiors project for a high-profile computer company. It's a project that will keep a few of our staff busy for more than a year and, as you might guess, we are working with a large project team that includes several client representatives, several engineering consultants, another design firm, telecommunications consultants and a pre-selected general contractor. Until the beginning of construction, it will be our firm's responsibility to create and distribute meeting notes (also called minutes, although I'll never understand why) to the project team. One of our project team's goals is to use e-mail and Internet technology for all project communications. It sounds easy, but once you begin using the Internet to correspond with others using myriad operating systems, Internet service providers (ISPs) and e-mail software, you begin to bump into a few issues related to the formatting of your text message. When you can't be 100 percent certain that tabs, carriage returns and asterisks are going to be seen appropriately on the receiving end, you need to streamline and simplify your formatting to appeal to the lowest common denominator. Luckily for us back at the office, we've just put the finishing touches on taking our Internet and e-mail capabilities to the next level. First, we've added a full-time ISDN connection. For those who care, ISDN stands for Integrated Services Digital Network, but all you need to know is that it's a really fast modem line that keeps your entire office network dialed into the Internet all day long. It's really cool, because anyone in your office can have fast and instantaneous access to the Web whenever they want-no more dialing in and waiting for the modems to screech at each other; no more running over to the one computer that has a modem. It's just there when you need it, no questions asked, and fast enough so that waiting for Web pages and downloads is rarely an issue. At the same time, we've revamped our e-mail software so that Internet e-mail and intra-office e-mail (used for telephone messages and critical internal communications such as announcing when someone has just made popcorn) are now integrated. Since we're continuously hooked up to the Internet, the software "jumps" out to our ISP every few minutes and brings in our outside e-mail. This way, anytime someone sends me an e-mail it will automatically pop up on my desktop computer within five minutes or so. It's also extremely easy and transparent to send messages to fellow Internet e-mailers. I'm currently averaging around 10 outside Internet e-mails every day. Since everyone in our office is so easily tied in, I average yet another four to five messages from employees forwarding their relevant e-mail to me (also known as "passing the buck"). So, with our new ISDN connection and our e-mail software improvements, it now seems that I'm so deluged with e-mail off the Internet, I have to arrive at the office an hour earlier just to sift through what's good and bad. And there seems to be no shortage of bad e-mail cruising its way around our Information Superhighway. Style Guide Back when business letters were typed with real carbon copies (I often wonder if Generation Xers even know what "cc:" actually means), there was a book, a bible of business writing, called Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. (and of course, you can now find it on the Web at www.columbia.edu/acis/bartleby/strunk/). It described how to format business correspondence, how to structure sentences and paragraphs, how to properly abbreviate and use punctuation and, most importantly, how to say what you want to say without going overboard. I don't know where Mr. Strunk is today, but wherever he is, I'm sure he's grimacing at how poorly we're heeding his advice when it comes to sending e-mails. Because the proliferation of e-mail in our life is such a new phenomenon, we've never been blessed with an Elements of Style for electronic correspondence. So I began asking friends, co-workers and colleagues about their experiences with e-mail. With special assistance from Elizabeth Cole Abbott, a Chicago, IL-based management consultant with a specialty in business etiquette (www.smartmanners.com), I've compiled a list of e-mail do's and don'ts-guidelines that we hope will help in composing e-mails that are respected and appreciated: • Give some thought to your subject line and use it intelligently. People who receive many e-mails every day often have to scroll through a list of them and index them based on the subject line. Choose a few words that describe both the general and specific subject matter of the e-mail. For example, a subject line such as "Chicago Project" may be too broad, especially if you will be sending several e-mails regarding this project in the future. Conversely, "Latest Budget" might lack enough information to determine which project you're talking about. In this example, a subject title of "Chicago Project Budget 8/20/98" might be more successful.   "There seems to be no shortage of bad e-mail cruising its way around our Information Superhighway."   • Abbott effectively writes, "DON'T WRITE AN ENTIRE MESSAGE IN CAPS. IT IS HARD TO READ AND IT SEEMS AS IF YOU'RE YELLING." If you want to yell, however, it works pretty well. • Don't ramble. "Think about what you want to say before writing," says Abbott. "Edit after you've written (typed). Rambling e-mail messages are just as bad as babbling voice mail messages." An easy way to deal with this is to use carriage returns to give your e-mail a visual paragraph structure. • Also note that if you use tabs for indenting and ALIGNing columns of information, they might not work in certain e-mail programs. Most of the time a tab gets translated into five spaces. You also should become familiar with your e-mail recipients to see if fonts and colors come through with your e-mail. It can be great when it works, but you can't always depend on it. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't, so be aware when you use tabs and specific fonts and whether they're important or not. • When you reply to an e-mail, you don't have to copy the entire original text (or the previous e-mail it was replying to) within the body of your e-mail. If you need to, copy and paste a few relevant lines. • Don't send e-mail and also attach a file with the text of the same e-mail. It's confusing to the recipient. Also, don't attach a file if it can be easily included within the body of the e-mail. People can always copy your e-mail text and paste it into other applications. If you do attach a file, make it a habit to include a sentence in your e-mail explaining what kind of file it is and what program it was created in-don't assume everyone has the same programs on their PCs as you. • I'm sure we've all seen e-mails by those who bunch punctuation characters as cutesy expressions, also known as "smileys" (this one is a guy on a skateboard: :-)-{-</)-see www.clubs.scholastic.ca/smiley.html for more. These can be fun, but people who use them in more than one sentence per e-mail should be banned from using the Internet. • Whenever I tell someone about a Web site, I always find myself saying "www-dot" before giving them the address. Although everyone already knows about these three Ws, we still say them anyway. I think it's because we use the "www-dot" and the "dot-com" kind of like oral quotation marks to frame the site's address. It's good to know, however, that many e-mail programs provide color-coded clickable links to Web sites from within the e-mail text, as long as they begin with "www." and end in ".com" or another appropriate suffix. This can be really convenient to the recipient, so don't forget to type in the entire address if you want people to find it quickly. • "E-mail messages are about as casual as a fax or a voice mail message," says Abbott. "If the situation calls for professionalism and a bit more formality, correspond through a printed letter or handwritten note. Don't use your computer as a way to avoid face-to-face interaction." • Have a reasonable "signature" for the end of your e-mails. Include your telephone, fax and e-mail address of course, but don't go overboard. It never seems to work when people use 30 lines of goofy characters that are supposed to create a cute picture at the end of their e-mails. It always makes it look as if something went wrong. • Finally, if you're among the millions who enjoy forwarding jokes or politically incorrect anecdotes to your friends and associates, the most important thing is to make sure they are funny. However, as Abbott points out, "Don't assume messages are private on either the sending or receiving end. Sending crude or malicious pictures or words may come back to haunt either party." In case you can't tell if it's crude or malicious, just send them to me and I'll be glad to let you know. David Johnson, AIA (dave@eastlk.com) is an architect and principal with Eastlake Studio, a Chicago, IL-based architecture and interior design firm with expertise in the application of computers to the world of design. Eastlake (www.eastlk.com) is located at 435 N. Michigan Ave., Ste. 3100, Chicago, IL 60611; (312) 527-0200; fax: (312) 527-0699.