What Your E-mail Etiquette Says About You

http://www.creditcards.com/credit-card-news/ftc-fines-debt_collection-texting-1282.php

Thesis:  “But even the most garbled and indecipherable of them are saying something, and what they have to say is, in terms of social status, a bummer. See, the e-blurt, like so many modes of personal expression, is all about power.”

The thesis states that the emailer or texter is too busy to spell out what he or she is trying to convey, so they have given you the job to decode it.  They do this because they are more busy or powerful then you and don’t have time to waste.

First Supporting Argument:  “To shoot a messy spitball through the cybernetic air is to convey a very simple and subconscious message to it recipient: I am busier than you, hence I am more powerful than you.”

The first supporting argument states that the sender feels as though they have already mastered the correct etiquette. In that case they don’t feel the need to practice it on a lower status’.

Second Supporting Argument:  “But these days it is often the highly wired overlords, and those who aspire to march among them, who choose to express themselves in the brute vernacular of 12-year-old- mall rats. “One, it says that you’re sort of ‘hip’ powerful. You’re not formal and stuffy. And done right, it can also remind people of your power. In other words, you’re so confident of your position in life that what might be considered errors for others are not errors for you.”

The second supporting argument states that it is also done to stay current and connect to the times and connect to a younger audience.  As well as to not appear stuffy and stale.

Third Supporting Argument:  “Still, the catch is that that CEO might be planting the seeds of his own sabotage. As Flynn explains, “If your poorly written e-mail messages are retained as part of the company’s electronic business records, and the company is hit with a lawsuit, and your e-mail is subpoenaed, the fact that your messages were written in an unprofessional illogical way could come back to haunt not only you but the company as well. Because that may help support a plaintiff’s claim that it wasn’t a professional work environment.”

The third supporting argument doesn’t support the flow of the thesis, but it does back up the fact that there can be consequences to inadequate use of grammar and communicating.

Conclusion:  “Which only confirms what I’ve always felt about power: that the people who really understand it don’t say anything at all.”

The conclusion states the underlying feelings that the author truly has about the subject.

Connor Allen, Preston Allen, Madeleine Seltzer, Dustin Saunders