Instant Messaging Etiquette Backwashes Into Email

Anne Truitt Zelenka suggests that email etiquette is changing, which she likens to immunity:

[from Rising Email Immunity Leads to Conflict over Email Etiquette � Web Worker Daily]

[...] we’re seeing conflict over exactly how email should be treated.

Is it okay to delay response or not to respond at all? Are short, to-the-point emails curt and cold, or are they okay in a time of crushing email volumes? Could you treat email like a river, similar to Twitter or chat streams, ignoring stuff from the past in favor of focusing on the present? Or is it critical to process email with some empty inbox scheme that focuses you on each individual message?

I think this is the backwash of instant messaging etiquette, where being brief, almost curt, is the norm, and where you just don't have to answer if you are busy, and there is no expectation of a follow-up later on. The premise that an email should always lead to a response is dying, thank the many gods.

Remember that the core principle of etiquette is to not cause offense: but if everyone accepts the 'no reply is necessary' model, then no one is offended. And think of the energy the world would save if one out of five (or more) emails proved to be totally superfluous and merely ornamental. It's green, baby, green!

Comments

[Stephanie Booth]

There is a problem with the "no reply" model, though: e-mails, and text message, and IMs, for that matter, sometimes do not reach their destination. It's happened to me enough (with all three mediums) that I know it's not just a "theoretical risk".

So, in the absence of a response, how do I know that my message was received -- or read, for that matter?

[Dan Hull]

I think the context of the e-mail would provide a major indication of the advisability of a nonresponse. In most cases of "business" e-mail, an acknowledgement of receipt is necessary because there is usually a task associated with the message. In other cases, the e-mail ends up being a surrogate "Instant Messenger", usually because IM is seen as a "not official business" application and access is killed at a firewall/proxy server. In those instances, a nonreply often becomes the only means of ending a "who gets the last jibe" about the moronic mullet head on last night's episode of COPS.