{"id":86,"date":"2006-05-12T19:43:36","date_gmt":"2006-05-13T00:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sevenseek.com\/collegev2\/2006\/05\/12\/why-older-people-hate-reading-our-emails-and-what-to-do-about-it\/"},"modified":"2020-05-07T19:43:36","modified_gmt":"2020-05-08T00:43:36","slug":"why-older-people-hate-reading-our-emails-and-what-to-do-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sevenseek.com\/collegev2\/2006\/05\/12\/why-older-people-hate-reading-our-emails-and-what-to-do-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Why older people hate reading our emails, and what to do about it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ben Bleikamp at CollegeStartup wrote a great post<\/a> about young people and their tone in email.\u00c2\u00a0 While we have grown up on hundreds of\u00c2\u00a0hours of instant messaging, the older crowd isn’t as inclined to the casualness of the web.<\/p>\n

“Being professional doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t mean you have to be long winded or sound scripted. Just talk. Be natural. When I write an email I always whisper it to myself as I type, I want to make sure it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s something I would actually say out loud.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Keep Ben’s advice in mind when e-mailing potential bosses and when scouting internships this summer.\u00c2\u00a0 When I email anyone over 25 I try to abide by the following “rules”.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m no email guru but these are just some of my observations from my experiences.<\/p>\n

1.\u00c2\u00a0 Avoid any attempts at sarcasm<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sounds like a no-brainer, but sometimes we neglect to flip off the instant messaging switch.\u00c2\u00a0 There are many business studies that show that e-mail tone is often misunderstood.\u00c2\u00a0 Be clear and direct, and don’t crack any jokes your grandmother wouldn’t get.<\/p>\n

2. As Mr. Bleikamp\u00c2\u00a0warns: keep it short.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Surprisingly the book The Elements of Style<\/em> (buy it…now!)\u00c2\u00a0can apply wonderfully to email.\u00c2\u00a0 Any email longer than a paragraph or two should be a phone call.\u00c2\u00a0 If you have a phobia about calling strangers…get over it.\u00c2\u00a0 Think about if you were an employer.\u00c2\u00a0 Would you rather hire a candidate that’s just\u00c2\u00a0a series of faceless,\u00c2\u00a0voiceless\u00c2\u00a0e-mails? Or the candidate that you can connect a voice (a therefore a personality)\u00c2\u00a0to?<\/p>\n

3. Using a listserv?\u00c2\u00a0 Dont hit reply.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I don’t know about other colleges but Temple University has a series of interdepartmental listservs that allow mass emails.\u00c2\u00a0 Problem is, some people respond to those mass emails by hitting “reply” so their reply gets sent to the whole department.\u00c2\u00a0 The journalism listserv at Temple is full of people shelling out their private info and then getting yelled at by six or seven disgruntled students who hate their inboxes being clogged.<\/p>\n

4. Omit unnecessary e-mails.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I’m pretty sure professors and employers\u00c2\u00a0get bombarded with hundreds of e-mails a week from students.\u00c2\u00a0 Make sure when you e-mail someone for business or academic reasons that\u00c2\u00a0it’s a must.\u00c2\u00a0 If you ever belonged to a forum community you should know all about this.<\/p>\n

[tags]email, e-mail, College Startup, elements of style[\/tags]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ben Bleikamp at CollegeStartup wrote a great post about young people and their tone in email.\u00c2\u00a0 While we have grown up on hundreds of\u00c2\u00a0hours of instant messaging, the older crowd isn’t as inclined to the casualness of the web. “Being…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-86","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sevenseek.com\/collegev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sevenseek.com\/collegev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sevenseek.com\/collegev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sevenseek.com\/collegev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sevenseek.com\/collegev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=86"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sevenseek.com\/collegev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":489,"href":"https:\/\/www.sevenseek.com\/collegev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86\/revisions\/489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sevenseek.com\/collegev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sevenseek.com\/collegev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sevenseek.com\/collegev2\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}