‘Send’

Will Schwalbe and David Shipley say they were so overwhelmed by the amount — and muddled quality — of the email they were getting…that they wrote a whole book about it.  It’s called "Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better." Prompted by my friend Ashley Phillips’ piece last month on email etiquette, we’ve done up a version for World News (webcast version HERE),  and for the broadcast we interviewed Schwalbe and Shipley.  They’re a delight to talk with (my emails have become much more precise since I made contact with them), and they’ve looked deeply into what, for most of us, is an everyday subject — until some mistake comes back to bite us. "This fantastic technology showed up on our doorstep one day and took over our lives, and we didn’t really give it a lot of thought," says Shipley, who, by day, edits the Op-Ed Page of the New York Times.  “And email compels you to give it not much thought.  It happens so fast, it’s incredibly easy." Remember, they say, email is not a letter, and it’s not a chat, so…what is it? "We’re just now coming to agreement as to what’s polite, what’s rude, what’s acceptable, what’s unacceptable, what’s pleasant and what’s horrific," says Schwalbe, a former publishing executive. This being a multimedia age, the authors have set up a website, www.thinkbeforeyousend.com.  That’s the closest thing they have to a mantra: think about what you’re sending.  Is it polite?  Is it clear?  Will it get you fired?  How many people do we know who wanted to grumble to office mates about a rude message from the boss — and clicked "Reply" to the boss instead of "Forward" to their office mates? Schwalbe and Shipley invite people to forward their own worst-ever messages…like one from a person who received this email: "I NEED YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS IN ORDER TO PROCESS YOUR REQUEST THANK YOU." Do you have your own?  One caution: once you click "Send," your message is out there — and there’s no getting it back.