E-mail
E-mail is
unavoidably central to everyday life. If used wisely, it is a godsend. However, there are good and bad ways to use
it, and if one isn’t careful it can easily end up consuming vast amounts of
time to no good effect. It is surprising
how many people have not worked out a modus
vivendi with this tool, and have consequently let it dominate their
lives. That is why I have jotted down
these brief notes. My hope is that they
will at least reduce the chance that emailers encountering my email style will
‘consider it rude,’ as Clarice Starling put it.
First and
foremost, please remember that I (like many people) get far more emails than I
could possibly reply to with anything more than basic courtesy. The average runs at maybe 100 per day during
the teaching quarter. Please excuse me
if I come across as clipped or curt.
It would be
possible to spend all day online dealing with email and still not achieve the
elusive perfect quality of communication that one would wish for. So I ration my time, spending two hours per
day (maximum) on email. Generally this
means one hour in the morning and one in the evening. I may be online at other times, but I may not
be. Please don’t be offended if you
don’t get an instant reply. There may
also be times when I am offline, especially while travelling.
Most emails
that do not require extended responses will get answers in 24 hours. If you need a quicker reply, please use the
telephone. A slower reply is often
better: after all, history is supposed to be a reflective enterprise, and
reflection takes a little time.
If I don’t
reply in a couple of days, feel free to re-send your message. What has probably happened is that the
original scrolled up the screen as more emails arrived, and I forgot that it
existed. That’s reprehensible, I know,
but it happens to all of us occasionally.
I try not to do
long, discursive emails. I think of an
email as halfway between a telegram and a letter – not quite as blunt as the
former, but also not as long or circuitous as the latter. I know that others see the medium
differently, but this is how I have found it to work best. The optimum length is 5 sentences or less.
If a message is
complex, it’s better to speak in person than to go back and forth several times
over email. The scope for
misunderstanding on email is very high.
Even if the literal meaning of words is clear, “tone of voice” can
easily be misconstrued, sometimes to serious and lasting effect. Phone conversations generally don’t suffer
from this problem nearly as much. So,
again, use the telephone. If you need a
record of something we agreed to on the phone, it’s a good idea to send an
email then, saying what it was.
I hope this
sounds reasonable. By all means let me
know if you’ve anything to suggest.… Email would be a good way to do that.
Adrian Johns
773 702 2334
(office)
773 203 0809
(cell)
Twitter: @ADSJohns