Eng 316 Discussion Question

"Brief Correspondence" Please respond to the following:

• Think about all the emails and text messages you have sent in the last 24 hours. Discuss how much time went into planning the correspondence, and the consequences of the time spent planning.
• The textbook indicates that emails and memos should be an appropriate length for your message. Create a standard or best practice for determining an appropriate length for an email and a memo.

Part 2: reply to one of the following student posts, replies do not need to be super long btw. But if you say the student did an excellent job for example the prof. wants to know exactly why you think so. 

a.  

• Think about all the emails and text messages you have sent in the last 24 hours. Discuss how much time went into planning the correspondence, and the consequences of the time spent planning.

The amount of time I spend responding to an email, or text message really depends on the context of what is being said. Sometimes I will get a giant wall of text, so I need more time to read it and sometimes will need to include more content in a response. If it is a time sensitive message, then naturally I will need to make my response be sent more quickly and make such a response be a higher priority. 

When I send emails to clients at work. Often times I will have a team mate peer review the email. This is a good practice, because as the author of the email, of course it makes sense to me, but will it make sense to the reader? By having a team mate peer review the email, they can help refine the message so that it more clear. In addition, since I work in IT, sometimes we need to dial back the techno babel and try to translate that into english.

• The textbook indicates that emails and memos should be an appropriate length for your message. Create a standard or best practice for determining an appropriate length for an email and a memo.

Best practice for the length of an email or memo to have it be long enough to inform the reader your point or message but not too long winded. Sometimes, less is more. Keeping the email concise and to the point is a good thing. If the email or memo is too long, a lot of readers will skip either parts of the body or ignore the message entirely. "Too long did not read" is a very common reaction to long messages. 

In addition, a super long message can deny the opportunity for a bidirectional conversation. If you send a message, and it covers a ton of different points, the reader will need to respond to each of those points. And since email is a much quicker method of message delivery than snail mail, you can more realistically have a conversation or conference with multiple people via email similar to a chat forum. With snail mail, its very much a slower point to point message.

b.  

In the last 24 hours I have not sent any email messages but I have sent a lot of text messages.  Very little time went into planning the text messages that I sent, which depending on the message did have consequences.  A lot of the time when I send text messages I quickly type them and just hit send, when that happens I often make typos.  If I took the type to review what I typed prior to sending the text message, the typos could easily be avoided. I often type “I” instead of text speak “U”, which can cause confusion about what the message I am trying to get across actually is.   Even though I haven’t sent any emails in the last 24 hours I wanted to comment on this anyways.  I always review work related emails very thoroughly prior to sending them out, I do not want to come across as not professional.  It is crucial to take the time to actually review emails before sending them out for work, it could really change the way people think of you as an employee.

A standard or best practice for an appropriate length of an email or message is quite simple, just long enough to get the message across to the reader.  We do not want to send memos or messages that are long winded or included information that isn’t related to the primary message we are trying to deliver.  The length should be enough that we are detailed in the message we are sending, but not too long because the reader could get confused or frustrated with the message.

or

c.  

Over the last 24 hours I've sent several emails and text messages. The majority, if not all, of my text messages have been informal with little time going into planning the correspondence. As a result, there were several grammatical errors as well as break down in communication due to lack of clarity. My emails on the other hand are more so formal and business related. More planning goes into them as they have high visibility and reflect me as a person to my colleagues. In addition, planning allowed for direct and clear communication as well.

Any email or memo should be clear and to the point. The audience should be able to determine the topic based on subject of the email or memo. In addition, the body of either document should support and backup the subject as direct as possible leaving out "fluff" and "fillers". In closing, memos and email should be a legitimate paragraph or two in length pending the subject and topics being covered.