PSA: Communication advice

seeker

Thu, Aug 13 2015, 1:19 pm

Recently been working a side job that entails a lot of communication with various random people and there are a couple of things I would love for them to know but am not going to tell them. So consider it my free gift to you instead:

1. Excessive punctuation makes you sound aggressive. It does not make your point stronger, it just makes you sound either annoyed or annoying. From the overall email conversation in which this happened, I eventually figured out that it's just the writer's style but at first it was extremely off-putting because it sounded like she was annoyed at me.
"Do you get what I mean???"
"I think it's too purple!!!"
Very unprofessional. For your own good, please, use just one of whatever punctuation is appropriate, and save your exclamation points for your most enthusiastic exclamations.

2. When you tell someone you're going to call back, either give a time frame or do it right away. I can't hold my phone line for you all day. TWICE already it happened to me, not "this isn't a good time, I'll call back another time" but "Can I call you back from a better phone line? OK just a minute" and so I'm waiting.... and waiting... and should be moving on to my next call. SO RUDE. Please don't do this either.

seeker

Thu, Aug 13 2015, 2:31 pm

I find the question marks more irritating, actually. I feel like I'm being yelled at. Exclamation points usually just make you look goofy. Though in certain contexts they also can achieve the yelling effect.