Some of us love the informality of email and prefer that it resist institutionalization. Now the New Yorker reports, that two text-based professional (David Shipley, the Op-Ed editor of the Times, and Will Schwalbe, the editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books) have conjured up an email style guide.
Two years back, Slate.com suggested that the American and European sensibilites regarding email were worlds away (article), and they made some good points–the skinny–for Europeans, e-mail has replaced the business letter, and for Americans, it has replaced the telephone.
The New Yorker, which has been using umlauts in lieu of hyphens (what century are we in?), isn’t exactly the go-to guide for contemporary writing style, but its interesting to know that even the calcified are thinking about email (and other e-based communications) nowadays.
Publisher’s Weekly tells us:
Shipley and Schwalbe…explain why people so often say “incredibly stupid things” in their outgoing messages. “Email has a tendency to encourage the lesser angels of our nature,” they note. They also offer “seven big reasons to love email,” along with quick guides to instant messaging and e-mail technology, all the while urging us to “think before [we] send.”
Ok, maybe their intention is not horrible, so if you must check out their book, “Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home” is on sale today everywhere (Amazon listing).
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