From Formal Letters to Informal Emails?

According to Schwalbe from the article, Emoticons and email ettiquette, an email is not just an email. Instead, it acts as a symbol of how people treat one another where if one is being unclear, annoying and demanding in an email, he or she is not just portraying it in an email, but representing their own attitudes. Twenty years ago, a manager who wants to send a message to his or her employees will have to write memos, leave the memos on their desks or write sticky notes and paste them on their monitors or workplace dividers. However, where technology has improved, email, according to Ducheneaut and Bellotti (2001) has became more of a habitat that an application used in a computer. Also, they assumed that the use of email is definitely overloaded but yet depends on the role of each users and the nature of one’s workplace.

In the article, Byron stated that emails are vulnerable as people may misperceive the message that is sent. For instance, if a boss sends a mail to praise one of the employee that his or her sales quota but also added carbon copies of this mail to all the others who are not achieving their sales target, what is the boss really trying to do? To really praise that particular employee or to indirectly imply pressure on the rest of the employees? In addition, the formality of the emails being sent may also differ. Schwalbe in the article stated that people who does not address one as Dear Sir/Madam could be offensive and intrusive. For example as stated above, if one of the employee who did not achieved the sales target were to reply this boss without addressing the boss appropriately, this person could be leading himself or herself to deep trouble. According to Oxford University Press (2009), a formal email would be used when sending to a senior in workplace, someone that is not very close or someone whom is of high authority while informal mails are mostly used when sending to friends or to colleagues of similar ranking in work.

An example of formal email and an informal email:

a) Formal email with proper address (eg: senior manager sending email to employee)

b) Informal email with layman English terms (eg: sending email to a friend)

In my opinion, I find that formality is of utmost importance. Even when emailing a friend, we should address our friends, i.e. Dear Ryan/John as this does not only portrays professionalism but basic respect for another human being. Just like how people used to send letters back in the days, at the beginning a formal letter, one will definitely see the address, Dear Sir/Madam.

References:

Ducheneaut, N & Bellotti, V 2001, ‘Email as habitat; An exploration of embedded personal information management’, Xerox PARC, USA.

Oxford University Press 2009, Levels of formality in email writing, Business Result Advanced.