Exclamation Marks!!!!

There seems to be an indiscriminate overuse of the exclamation mark at present. Especially, this is the case in electronic communication, like blogs, emails and social networking sites. What is the point?!? (yes, pun intended)

The REAL use for an exclamation mark is in the place of a full stop, as follows:

* following a command - eg. Stop thief! Go away! Come here now!

* after an exclamation(who'd have thought?) - eg. Well done! No way! Congratulations! That's crazy!

* to show sarcasm or irony - eg. With small children in the house, who needs sleep!

Most commonly, the exclamation mark is found in dialogue to indicate the speaker's tone of voice. This is the likely explanation for its prevalence in electronic communication - in a medium which has been stripped of verbal tones (volume, pitch, pace) and complementary body language, the exclamation mark picks up the ball and runs with it.

The problem is that, if it is employed too often (eg. Hi!!! Great to hear from you!!! We're great!!!!!! I'm in love!), the reader can end up missing the really exciting part of the message. So, use your exclamation mark sparingly and, when you do, let it have the impact it deserves!

!!

http://www.wordwriteforsuccess.com.au/

The Philosophy of Email Checking

Okay, I have a question for you - how many times a day do you check your email?

Actually, I have a lot of questions for you (and not many answers!), such as:

* Does your email checking depend on where you are? For example, do you check your email more often during the day if you are at work than you would if you were at home? And, if yes, is it your work email you are checking? Would you wait until you are on a lunch break to check personal email if you are at work? Further, are you able to complete a separate task without taking a break to check an email, especially if you have an alert pop-up every time an email arrives?

* Have you ever sent an email to a person in your workplace who is physically less than 3 metres from you at the time? It's okay, so have I!

* Do you check email routinely? I know some people who check email first thing in the morning, then last thing at night. Would you be able to go 24 hours, 48 hours or a whole week without checking your email? Say you went on a holiday and there was no email access available (and you're already saying that you would have ascertained this as a pre-requisite prior to booking that holiday), how would you cope?

* For those of you, like me, with more than one email address, which email address do you check most frequently? Do you check your email addresses in order of preference? Which email address would you check if you only had enough time to check one?

* Now, to replying and sending - do you always reply to an email as soon as you have read it? Does it depend on who has sent you the email?

* Does the frequency at which the same person emails you increase or reduce the urgency of your need to reply? Or, once again, does it depend on who has sent you the email?

* Do you expect an email recipient to reply to you upon receiving your email within a set time frame - what is an acceptable time frame to allow for an email reply to be sent? Do your settings allow you to receive notifications of your recipients opening your email (and can you tell when a sender has this setting for their email message to you)? Under what circumstances, dare I ask, is it okay not to reply to an email at all?

Which brings me to my point - does the human control the email or does the email control the human? I know, I know, more than enough questions for one post...and I haven't even begun to consider the content of the email itself! Maybe some other time...

http://www.wordwriteforsuccess.com.au/

Write a REAL letter!

When was the last time you wrote a real letter? I mean a hand-written personal letter; a letter to a friend or a family member. You can't count an email, an sms text message, a birthday card or even a note to your child's teacher as a real letter (although, if this was hand-written, it's a good start). Can you even remember the last letter you wrote of this kind? Consider this - do your friends and family members remember what your hand-writing looks like?

If your experience is similar to many today, the personal letter is almost an antique. Yet, over history, personal letters have conveyed significant meaning and recorded major, and not so major, events in our lives. These include the love letters which Napoleon wrote to Josephine, the many war-time letters written by soldiers of World War One and World War Two to loved ones at home, and the letters written by explorers such as Captain Cook as voyages of discovery were made in the 18th century. In fact, the personal letter was once (and no so long ago!) the primary means of communication between people separated by distance.

How, then, has the personal letter been so massively usurped? Now that we have the means to send a message instantly to the other side of the world, via email, for instance, are we too impatient to be heard (or read) that we can't wait the time it takes for the same message to be written in a personal letter and sent by postal mail? Would the message or information you wanted to communicate be so horribly out-of-date if it had to be delayed by the time it took for the post to be delivered, one or two days within the country, and around two weeks for international post? Yes, email is free, but that's not the only reason we rely on it so much more. We can also send the same electronic letter to many friends, cutting down on time.

Each Christmas, a mass-produced personal letter is the choice many make to update family and friends of the year's events. The hand-written letter tucked into a Christmas card is an increasingly rare event, but each year, my parents receive exactly this from one of their friends. This friend writes a letter several pages in length, always filled with personalised information about her own family, tailored to my parents and what they would want to know about their friend's past year.

You know how this is going to end, don't you? Think of a friend or family member you know would love to receive a hand-written letter. Think of the pleasure they would feel when they checked their letterbox and discovered a hand-addressed envelope containing a hand-written letter from you. Write that person a letter. If you're still not convinced, think about how wonderful you would feel if, when you check your letterbox tomorrow afternoon, there was a lovely letter from a dear family member or friend waiting for you to enjoy.

I'm off now - I have a letter to write.

http://www.wordwriteforsuccess.com.au/