Here are some quotations out of ancient letter-writing handbooks. These quotations should give you a sense of the ancient lore of letter writing and help you to understand the evolution of letter writing as a practice.
Look at Paul's Letter to Philemon through the lens of these ancient epistolary maxims or observations. What does each one lead you to say about this letter? Before you continue with these notes, look at my discussion of ancient letter writing and their relationship to business communication.
Correspondence, for our purposes, is mediated conversation, having advantages and disadvantages.
As written, rather than oral discourse, it has advantages and disadvantages. Among the advantages are its ability to transcend time and space. A conversation can take place across great distances and can be carried on asynchronously. Because it is written, a letter becomes a record of the conversation, and it can be consulted in the future to verify what was said and what wasn’t. It therefore has greater legal weight than a face-to-face, unrecorded conversation. Also, because the writer is not in immediate contact with reader, she or he has time to consider the message, to craft it carefully, to create a persona, to check content, format, grammar, and so on.
On the other hand, written discourse, because it is mediated, is not as rich as face-to-face conversation. Real time, face-to-face conversation is enriched because there are multiple channels of information at work. Interlocutors hear each other, see facial expressions, read body language, catch the rhythm of the other person’s composition of thoughts. They can immediately query the other person, asking for more information. Those who are speaking have a much better sense of whether or not the other person understands the message and a much better sense of how they the other person is reacting to it. Those who are listening have a much better sense of whether the person is speaking sincerely or insincerely, whether the thoughts are spontaneous or rehearsed, and so on.
For more discussion of this issue, read The Handbook for Technical Writing, "Selecting the medium."
There are many pitfalls one can fall into when using correspondence instead of face-to-face conversation.
Pitfall one: Trying to cover more than one topic. A letter, memo, or email should be restricted to one message. Although it is tempting to combine more than one message, perhaps using a subject line like “Two Things,” it is better to write two different memos than to combine topics. Why? You have to think of the reader. How do people read letters, memos, and emails? Generally, they read them very rapidly, with the question a couple questions in mind:
Notice that combining topics complicates things for the reader at each of these points except the first.
Pitfall two: Failing to let the reader know your purpose. Because readers read so fast, they are vulnerable to misreading your letter, email, or memo unless you clearly state your purpose. In most cases, you should state your purpose in the first sentence (unless you need to buffer the message as in a “bad news” letter). A good way to figure out how to write a purpose statement is to follow these three easy mental moves:
Example: I wanted to tell you that I will not be available Friday, February 5.
I will not be available Friday, February 5.
Because I have an opportunity to attend the NPSAS, I will not be available Friday, February 5.
Once you have stated your purpose you can go on to give background if necessary and to elaborate on the message. This way the reader knows what your point is and attaches everything you say to that superordinate concept. Memos or emails that bury the purpose or request in the middle or at the end of the correspondence risk being ignored or deleted before the reader finds what you want. Even if the reader doesn’t miss it, she is likely to become irritated trying to find the point of the message, and an irritated reader tends to be an uncooperative one.
Besides writing a clear purpose statement, you can also make your purpose clear to the reader by writing a clear subject line in memos and emails. Subject lines like “announcement,” “a note,” “fyi” etc. convey no information at all. Similarly, subject lines that refer to something that the other person is not likely to remember (such as, “case #S9567E”) also fail to communicate. The subject line should let the reader know exactly what the message is about.
Pitfall three: Saying something you will want to retract tomorrow. We often resort to writing when we are disagreement with someone. Perhaps we think we can argue more effectively in writing; perhaps we’re afraid of a face-to-face confrontation or interaction. Generally, once we have made our argument in writing, we feel pretty good about ourselves—“I told him.” “She’ll never be able to come up with an answer for that one.” “That SOB, I hope this hits him right between the eyes!” Before you know it, you’ve clicked the send button, and away it goes. Next morning you realize that you have made matters worse. The basic rule of thumb on this is “Never send a heated message the same day you write it; always sleep on it.” This rule is sometimes hard to follow when you’re interacting on email, but silence instead of a quick and dirty reply can save you a lot of grief.
Pitfall four: Being loquacious. So you get a good start on laying out your case, and you keep elaborating. You don’t want to let any possible counter argument go unaddressed, so you work in your rebuttal up front. Before you know it, you have two, three, or four pages of single spaced diatribe. The best thing to do with this document is delete it. The second best thing to do with it is to accidentally let your email time out and loose the document. The third best thing to do is to print it off and put it in your personal therapeutic journal, and then delete it. Basically what you’ve done is clarified your thinking and massaged your soul. Those are good things, but you shouldn’t confuse them with communicating with someone else.
Pitfall five: Letting the unprotected, quotable, dumb-ass comment get out. Although it is good to trust people; it is better to protect yourself. You should read your correspondence from as many different perspectives as possible once you have written it. How will my intended reader take that comment? What if this message falls into the hands of “so and so”? What can they do with it to get me? What if that person who is trying to undermine me reads this? Are then any individual sentences or phrases that she can take out of context to use against me? In short, you should understand that when you send a letter, a memo, or an email, you are publishing it; that means that although you may expect it to be private, it is not so by nature. A published document is a public one. If you have to say something that you don’t want a record of, the only recourse is to talk to someone face to face (not by phone).
Pitfall six: Projecting the image of an incompetent. Emails, especially, are traps waiting to expose your ignorance and carelessness. We compose emails at the screen. We can go back and modify the text. We think we are following our language as we compose. We get to the end and send it. It is not unusual, if I copy the email to myself, to open it up finding in the first line or two a lapsed sentence, a horrendous misspelling, or some other stylistic wonder that would embarrass the typical third grader. Spell check; reread word for word; if need be, print it out and read it off paper. A few goof ups like this, and the boss has evidence to prove you’re incompetent and careless.
Pitfall seven: Accidentally spamming the listserv. The message came to you over a listserv. You reply by clicking on the reply button. You send off the message only to find a copy returning to your inbox. Why? Oh, #@!, I did it again. Now 35 people know what I’m doing Saturday night and with whom? Solution—ask people using the listserv to use words in the salutation that evoke a group, words like “colleagues,” “group members,” “fellow techies.” These group names should signal that you’re dealing with a group document. The other solution is to check where the message came from, but we usually forget to do that.
Pitfall eight: Using correspondence when another medium is better for the occasion. Some things are too complicated, too important, too sensitive, too private to say through mediated correspondence. A phone call may be sufficient, but often the best thing to do is to make an appointment if the person is above you, or simply go talk to the person if she is a colleague.
Pitfall nine: Being inappropriate. The business world is very hierarchical. Although people claim that they are working in “flat” organizations, human cultures always revert to hierarchical structures. Using a too familiar tone with someone above you may be considered insulting; talking down to those below you may cause resentment; crossing the line with sexual innuendo may be taken as sexual harassment. In short, one needs to be careful with tone.