My circle uses NNTOOR in the subject line, plus the text being communicated (No Need To Open the email Or Respond (everything's in the subject line).
It's awesome to zip through 10 NNTOOR emails in one minute!
Very Short Reply Expected
211–220 of 232 posts
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#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
It gets suspicious if you write this and you don't have an iPhone ;)
"Sent from my Samsung" "Sent from my Windows Phone" "Sent from my $OEM" They all follow the same pattern these days.
I might start using "Sent from my Pokedex" or "Sent from my Pip-Boy 3000"
Re: Very Short Reply Expected
#213I think people tend to grossly exaggerate how many emails they really do get. Are you really that damn busy that you can't spend a minute or less writing a more natural and conversational reply that indicates to the other person that you're reciprocating the amount of thought and effort they invested in their message? I agree with some others here in saying that this is awkward. You don't strive for efficiency in soc…
Just as a data point for you, I get about 50 emails a day that require an answer. I'd love people to show clearly that they're happy with an answer of at most 5 words, but mostly I have to top, tail, and generally be polite.
I've timed it - many emails require at least 2 to 3 minutes for a very short, but properly composed reply. For me that's nearly 3 hours a day.
Re: Very Short Reply Expected
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm glad I'm not the only person who had this reaction. Sheesh, how hard is it to type out "A one word response would be fine." It takes me less than 10 seconds to type that. C'mon.
Because if you take the trouble to write that out, there will still be slightly more pressure on the receiver to reciprocate by giving a more formal reply, despite the surface content. I think "how hard is it?" is the wrong question. We should be asking "how can this be better?". It doesn't take very long to type something like "as far as I know", but we still routinely use acronyms like AFAIK, because as long as eve…
AFAIK, IMHO, INAL, etc. work because they are acronyms for very common phrases. Intelligent people can reason out their meaning based on context without you having to spell them out. That's why they are popular and why they work. There was never a global memo "Hey everybody we're going to start using AFAIK now."
VSRE doesn't work. It's better to just type out what you want to say in this case.
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#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
That would be a problem between you and...you. People are more important than "your time", and a failure to realize that is a dehumanization of the other party. The latter response demonstrates emotional sensitivity towards the other person in the conversation. Among most people, that is important. It makes the other party feel good. It reinforces that you do care about the other party enough to ensure that they are…
Thing is, we're not in high school anymore. We're all adults here and we should be able to see the difference between being rude and being terse. "potentially affronted" is not a thing I particularly care about. If I want to affront you, oh you'll know. Believe me. More interestingly, the only people I've ever seen write email like in that example are people who send/receive less than about 5 emails a day. The more t…
> Thing is, we're not in high school anymore. We're all adults here and we should be able to see the difference between being rude and being terse.
In written contexts, there often isn't. Without what I would call a significant amount of personal history, there isn't enough data and there aren't nonverbal cues to demonstrate terseness versus rudeness. Many people will assume rudeness, because that's what that pattern generally looks like.
Also, there's the nerd stereotype of being a standoffish jerk to consider, which you are doing a bang-up job of reinforcing with crap like this:
> "potentially affronted" is not a thing I particularly care about. If I want to affront you, oh you'll know. Believe me.
This is the sort of thing I would expect a teenager in the throes of self-absorption to say. I say this because I did. Then I grew up.
You're being an asshole. You'll be happier if you stop.
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#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I was hoping Google Wave would take off an neatly combine the two. This is the best thing about Facebook messages: they’re hafway between chat and email and a conversation can seamlessly morph from one form to the other and back.
Facebook messages suck. - You can't read them without announcing that you did. - FB parses and might even censor you message if it contains blacklisted domains.
Yes you can. That is a feature that is completely able to be turned off.
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#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
Facebook messages suck. - You can't read them without announcing that you did. - FB parses and might even censor you message if it contains blacklisted domains.
Yes you can. That is a feature that is completely able to be turned off.
How? I was only able to find browser extensions (i.e, hacks) to disable this "feature".
Re: Very Short Reply Expected
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thing is, we're not in high school anymore. We're all adults here and we should be able to see the difference between being rude and being terse. "potentially affronted" is not a thing I particularly care about. If I want to affront you, oh you'll know. Believe me. More interestingly, the only people I've ever seen write email like in that example are people who send/receive less than about 5 emails a day. The more t…
> Thing is, we're not in high school anymore. We're all adults here and we should be able to see the difference between being rude and being terse. In written contexts, there often isn't . Without what I would call a significant amount of personal history, there isn't enough data and there aren't nonverbal cues to demonstrate terseness versus rudeness. Many people will assume rudeness, because that's what that patter…
> "You're being an asshole. You'll be happier if you stop."
Not at all. I've noticed a general uptick in happiness since I started taking people at face value and stopped worrying about walking on egg shells for no reason whatsoever.
You know what you get by trying too hard to be polite and making absolutely certain no feelings could possibly get hurt? The language bureaucrats use to say "Your tax basis this year is X" on two A4 pages.
I hate it when people beat around the bush. So I avoid doing it.
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#219I like VSRE for composition as well as response efficiency.
Many email guides recommend short emails. But it can take more time to craft a pithy missive than a longer explanatory FYI note with a question at the end that needs responding to.
I'm not suggesting that we don't take care in writing emails, but no one wants to spend all day editing emails to some arbitrary standard of brevity anymore than they do answering them.
VSRE. Brilliant convention.
Re: Very Short Reply Expected
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
If we're really going for the gold: "No. Next month?"
I'm liking No ++month? :)
If we're really going for brevity above all else, then I think it can be taken for granted that the answer's 'no' if we suggest moving the month—so the 'no' can be dropped, too. (Alternatively, interpreting the reply as "Yes, how about next month?" seems to work perfectly well, though it's unusual.)