Christine Jalleh

Writing my recent article on “Effective Emails”, I’m struck by this quote from Plato:

“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something.”

In today’s click-happy, high-tech world where anyone and everyone has something to say (or blog or Tweet), it’s easy to send out too many messages…and have those messages get lost in the masses.

Are we in danger of doing that sometimes, especially for emails? Yes or no, it’s still good to refer to a checklist just before you hit that that “SEND” button.

As usual, here’s my article in full, which originally appeared in The Star’s “Mind Our English” column on August 19, 2009.

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ACCORDING to technology market research firm, The Radicati Group, an average of 210 e-mails are sent per day with business users sending and receiving about 156 e-mails per day (reported in August 2008).

The majority is spam, which still leaves an average of sixty-plus e-mails flooding your inbox every day.

With 1.3 billion e-mail users worldwide, it isn’t surprising to hear people state: “I’m buried in e-mails at the moment.” Despite this, Dr Sara Radicati, president and CEO of the The Radicati Group, still believes that “e-mail saves time”.

And why not? No matter where you are, no matter what time of the day it is, and no matter what you may be doing, you can still receive and send messages at the click of a mouse to one or thousands within your network.

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This article appeared in The Star’s “Mind Our English” column yesterday, which was the last issue edited by Kee Thuan Chye, who “manned” the column for the past eight years. (Read his farewell note ‘Goodbye and thank you‘.)

It has been a pleasure working with Mr. Kee and I know we won’t be seeing the last of him even though he’ll no longer be with MOE. Looking forward to working with the new editor

In the meantime, enjoy these light servings from the Land of Milk and Honey:

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GROWING up on a rich diet of British English through Enid Blyton, The Sullivans and Mind Your Language, my exposure to American English was limited to TV shows like The Cosby Show, Three’s Company or Eight Is Enough. As enjoyable as these shows were, they rarely included conversations about work.

Years later when I started working for an American and later an American organisation and participated in meetings or teleconferences with American colleagues, I was perplexed by the unfamiliar phrases used in our discussions.

If you’re in the dark like I was, here’s some light on these American mysteries.

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Working as a freelance writer now, I’m reminded of the “writing anxiety” or “writing apprehension” my college students faced when they got their assignments (engineering, business or IT).

Many of them had no idea where to start or what to do with the information they had gathered.

In most cases, the average student bungled their way through (unwittingly plagiarized nearly 80% of their assignments) and left everything to the last minute!

I sympathized with them most during final examinations because many would be scratching their heads or tapping their pencils as they faced a blank paper in front of them…

Whether you’re writing for school or work, I hope that the the article in The Star (May 13, 2009) will help. Got a question? Feel free to contact me.

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THE American National Commission on Writing surveyed 120 major American corporations affiliated with Business Roundtable (an association of CEOs leading US corporations in manufacturing, finance, services and high technology) and discovered that writing is a “threshold skill” for the hiring and promotion of professional employees in today’s workplace.

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