You are your e-mail
E-mailers: Is your inbox half empty or half full? I know, stupid question because they mean the same thing. (Why can't these psychologists get that through their half-thick heads, dammit?) The more revealing question would simply be: Is your inbox full or is it empty? If it's full, it may mean your life is cluttered in your home, marriage and checkbook, according to psychologist Dave " :)" Greenfield, who founded the Center for Internet Behavior in West Hartford, Conn. On the other hand, if you obsessively clear your inbox every 10 minutes, it may mean you miss opportunities, ignore nuances, neglect your family or fail to keep track of Big Ben's medical condition. In either case -- too full or too empty -- you need to see a psychologist immediately because you have -- how you say in America? -- "issues."
E-mail etiquette
We learned of the pitfalls of poor inbox maintenance from Jeff Zaslow in the Wall Street Journal. Merlin Mann, creator of 43folders.com, a Web site about personal productivity, warns polite people about ping-pong correspondence with chatty friends. They lack the stomach for a no-response brush-off, but, Mr. Mann says, ruthlessness is necessary. "You have to treat your inbox like you treat your mailbox at home," he told Zaslow. "You wouldn't store your bills in your mailbox. And leaving spam in your inbox is like leaving garbage in your kitchen."
Mindful of the ping-pong chat problem, The Morning File nonetheless would like to put in a word for courtesy: If you get a personal e-mail that is not lunatic, answer it. A simply "thanks" or brief acknowledgement is not a huge blow to productivity. Got it? Thanks.
Monster
"From a nifty little utility, e-mail has evolved into a monster that threatens to take over our whole lives."
-- Richard N. Bolles, author
The price of patriotism
A plaint from Bob Donaldson, Post-Gazette photographer, arising from the jingoistic frenzy to vote Jason Bay onto the All-Star team last month: "I find myself regretting clicking that electronic ballot for the maximum 25 votes. Why? My mailbox is now regularly peppered by unwanted e-mail from MLB.com, Pirates.com, and Monster.com, the sponsor of the online balloting. I normally read the fine print about the right to make use of your e-mail address, but in my eagerness to 'join the team' of a gazillion Pittsburghers stuffing the ballot box, I forgot this important step. I've now consigned those three annoying addresses to my junk mail filter so I no longer have to see their entreaties clogging my inbox."
We suspect Bob's inbox is very clean.
Watch it
One of every four employers has fired workers for e-mail misuse, according to the American Management Association. Another 2 percent have canned employees for inappropriate chats via instant messaging, or IM. Nearly 2 percent have issued pink slips for offensive blog content, even when the Internet posting originated on home computers. That last one remains a mystery to us: How can people who write something for the whole world to see think it is private?
ur kids can't rite? LOL
For many teens and pre-teens, instant messaging is the equivalent of the long telephone conversations of their adolescent predecessors. But here's something we find hard to believe in our current crotchety state: Rather than hurting language skills, instant messaging shorthand helps kids master how language works. Sali Tagliamonte, a linguistics expert at the University of Toronto, said she was -- example of linguist mastery coming up --"blown away" by the command of English, the creativity and the fluidity of language shown by the kids studied. IMing, cell-phone texting and chatroom-speak are "an expansive new linguistic renaissance," she said. The researchers found that instant messaging is closer to a written version of conversation than to writing a letter or e-mail -- a flexible combination of formal speech, colloquialisms and abbreviations. Acronyms, such as lol ("laughing out loud") and emotional text speech (such as "ha ha") usually represent less than 3 percent of instant messaging, the study said.
im sleepg. r u?
Teenagers hooked on text-messaging are doing it in their sleep. So says the Scottish Daily Record. (Headline: "Teens are text maniacs in bed") Some young people wake in the morning to find they have sent and received messages without being aware of it, said Dr. Dirk-Jan Dijk of the University of Surrey in England. His professional advice: "Turn the mobile phone off."
:) !!!!!
Tim Murray does not think e-mail-speak represents a great leap forward for the language. Tim is a Downtown lawyer but his claim to fame is that he is an unindicted co-conspirator in the very funny local fake news blog, The Carbolic Smoke Ball, touted in this space many a time (carbolicsmokeblog.blogspot.com.) He e-mails:
"The disturbing trend in electronic communication is to signal (that is, hit the reader over the head with) the author's intent, as opposed to letting the words speak, or not speak, for themselves.
Example:
George S. Kaufman's telegram to William Gaxton, star of Kaufman's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Of Thee I Sing," after a particularly uninspired performance: "WATCHING YOUR PERFORMANCE FROM THE LAST ROW. WISH YOU WERE HERE."
Imagine the same telegram, written by a text messager:
WATCHING YOUR PERFORMANCE FROM THE LAST ROW. WISH YOU WERE HERE. LOL
Or,
WATCHING YOUR PERFORMANCE FROM THE LAST ROW. WISH YOU WERE HERE. :)
Isn't that terrible? A separate language, that I don't speak, has cropped up: www.computeruser.com/resources/dictionary/emoticons.html. THIS IS EVEN WORSE THAN CHARGING FOR BOTTLED WATER!!
First Published: August 18, 2006, 4:00 a.m.
