End this e-mail madness

What started out as a handy tool for communication has become a modern-day plague, writes FIONOLA MEREDITH

E-MAIL IS GETTING out of control. Once a simple, handy tool for super-fast communication, it has morphed into a technological pestilence, swamping inboxes everywhere with screed after relentless screed.

The problem is not just the gargantuan quantity of e-mail that many people have to deal with on a daily basis. No, the real irritation is often the quality of messages from colleagues, acquaintances and friends - or rather, the lack of it. A neat, sweet, well-expressed and succinct e-mail is truly a rare and precious thing.

Yet inboxes everywhere are clogged up with missives, ranging in tone from terse rant to vacuous waffle. It seems that, when it comes to e-mail, the substance and style associated with old-fashioned letter-writing have been overtaken by a form of badly punctuated verbal incontinence.

Top of many hate lists comes the group e-mail, with its attendant "reply all" function. While it's delightful to learn that there will be a pub quiz held next Monday night, it's not quite so much fun laboriously deleting the assorted anticipatory comments sent by those who are trigger-happy with the "reply all" button, such as "Woohoo! I'm well up for that Dave . . . hahaha . . ." or (my personal favourite, received last week) the wilfully obscure response, "teeeeeee heeeeeee ha - tra la la la la . . . teeeeeee heeeeeee ha - tra la la la la". Yeah, whatever.

Equally loathed is the indiscriminate use of capital letters: reversion to upper case comes across as a kind of digital shouting, giving the impression that the sender is VERY ANGRY INDEED. (The reverse scenario, the continuous use of lowercase letters, conveys an impression of spineless indifference. Would it really be too much effort to stick in the odd capital?)

And it's safe to say that the e-mailer who constantly appends "high priority" red exclamation marks to every message risks being taken as seriously as the boy who cried wolf. Similar questions of perceived credibility hang over the sender, who liberally adorns every missive with cute flowers, assorted puppies and a big flashy pink automatic signature.

Of course, almost everyone can identify one or two specific e-mail irritants that really set their teeth on edge. Joe, a senior civil servant, admits: "I dislike informality in general, so the thing that really annoys me is 'text talk' in e-mails, like 'c u soon m8'. Yuck. Worst of all are those chain e-mails that tell you to send the message on to five friends before the ninth day of the Year of the Cat or you'll die a horrible death. On the upside, if you do, you'll win the lottery and find a big hunky man in your bed."

Lindsay, a postgraduate student, takes a gentler approach to daft messages: "When someone sends you through an attachment saying something like 'this is the funniest thing ever' and you can't open it, I always wonder whether you should actually e-mail them back and tell them. I never do. I just thank them for sending me through the funniest thing ever."

And for Stuart, a writer, it's the poorly expressed e-mails that really rile him: "I'm an unrepentant grammar nazi and I hate people who don't know how to set up an automatic spell checker."

It goes without saying that spam e-mails are a nuisance. But some are more colourfully inventive than others. Laney, an academic, finds herself swinging from annoyance to reluctant amusement at the unsolicited, and some would say sinister, contents of her inbox. "Lots of people get the spam e-mails purportedly from childless dying ladies whose rich husbands have left them several million in a strong box somewhere, offering the recipient a proportion of the money if they can help retrieve it.

"I, however, am the only person I know who has twice received e-mails from people threatening to kill me. The story is that 'Blood Killer' - which is how it's signed - has been paid £10,000 to assassinate me, but having followed me for a week, he now knows I am innocent of all charges. All I have to do is leave £5,000 in his bank account, and he will not only let me live, but provide video footage of his employer. If, however, I try to contact the police, HIS BOYS (that's how it's written) will be watching me. The opening greeting is 'Bad day . . . '. Well, it makes me laugh."

How do you ensure that your own messages aren't the kind that make recipients groan and reach for the delete button? The ongoing spate of "netiquette" books and courses shows that at least some people are conscious of failings in the e-mail department. Sue Mulhall, who delivers e-mail etiquette courses for the Dublin-based computer training agency New Horizons, emphasises the need for clarity and thoughtful use of language in work-related correspondence.

"Some members of the younger generation, for example, might use text-messaging language in a business e-mail. But that's not appropriate; e-mail is a professional medium, for communicating with professional people. In general, I would advise people to err more on the side of semi-formality. And don't use phrases like 'ciao'."

The widely accepted leader in the field of e-mail etiquette books is Send: the How, Why, When and When Not of E-mail, by David Shipley, an editor at the New York Times, and Will Schwalbe, editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books. Their advice boils down to two key commonsense points: "think before you send" and "send e-mail you would like to receive".

Shipley and Schwalbe are especially concerned with the need for "tone", understood as a distinctive voice, in electronic communications: "If you don't consciously insert tone into an e-mail, a kind of universal default tone won't automatically be conveyed. Instead, the message written without regard to tone becomes a blank screen onto which the reader projects his own fears, prejudices and anxieties."

Surprisingly, however, they are in favour of such decorative fripperies as exclamation marks: "Because e-mail is without affect, it has a dulling quality that almost necessitates kicking everything up a notch just to bring it to where it would normally be," they write, adding that, "'I'll see you at the conference', is a simple statement of fact (but) 'I'll see you at the conference!' lets your fellow conferee know that you're excited and pleased about the event."

While you can't expect every e-mail you receive to be crafted in deathless prose, many agree that the tide of lazy techno-blather is now reaching saturation levels. A few people are so infuriated by the sheer quantity and idiocy of their e-mail that they have simply opted out.

Jack, who works in a senior post in a cultural institution, has an arrangement with his secretary that allows him to bypass e-mail almost entirely: the secretary prints out his e-mail, Jack writes a longhand response, and his secretary types it up and sends it in his name. He claims that the system gives him space and time to get on with his real work.

"I'm not a technophobe," insists Jack. "But I'm convinced that e-mail is abused and misused by both individuals and institutions. It's the perfect camouflage for socially inadequate personalities. For instance, don't you think it's crazy when the person who sits two desks away from you is sending you an e-mail, rather than actually speaking to you?"