Columnist John Katsilometes: A read on e-mail practices

Monday, June 25, 2001 | 8:32 a.m.

John Katsilometes is the Sun features editor. His column appears Mondays. Reach him at kats@lasvegassun.com or 259-2327.

Acomic once observed that postcards always dumb down the writer.

It's true.

"Hello! Vegas fun. Hot here. Losing money. Saw nudie show Friday. Siegfried & Roy Saturday. Not getting sleep. Bye!"

E-mail writing not much better.

"hey john. glad to finly here from you! hows everything in sin city! cant wait til you guys visit."

The blessing of e-mail is it enables the writer to type his or her thoughts in a precise and concise manner. But that's also its curse; if you want to tell Potsie to sit on it, you just type in "sit on it, Potsie" and away we go. In these instances we need a little filtering and editing. Too often we lose our sense of tact when we're in e-mail mode, forgetting the person on the other end has what we in the communications business refer to as "feelings."

Even setting a simple lunch date in e-mail mode can cause the writer to spin in any damaging direction. Arranging a lunch date on the phone is pretty routine:

"Can you do lunch Friday?"

"No. I never can on Friday, unfortunately. I'm too busy. Let's do it Monday."

"OK."

But in e-mail, the exchange can take on an entirely different tenor:

"RE: Lunch date.

"I can't do lunch Friday. I can never do lunch Friday and I don't know why if you know I can't do lunch Friday you keep trying to do lunch Friday. Have you even thought of another day? What about Monday? Please respond."

Not to come off as the e-mail Nazi, but as a society we should adhere to a few simple ground rules for the use of e-mail. We should never write while angry. This leads to the swiftest method of dumbing down a written message, the overuse of exclamation points and uppercase letters:

"DEAR SIR, I JUST READ YOUR ARTICLE ON GUN CONTROL! DO YOU EVEN OWN A GUN!! YOU MUST NOT VALUE YOUR FREEDOM AND SECOND AMENDMENT RIGHTS!!! WHERE DID YOU GO TO SCHOOL!!!

Um, Exclamation Tech?

Not to come off as the e-mail Nazi, but let's try to apply uppercase letters properly. Let's use some proper punctuation, at least make an attempt to spell our words correctly and construct our e-mail messages in a somewhat thoughtful manner.

Enough of this:

"i'm going to be coming to las vegas soon and was wondering if you could tell me where i can find someone to preform an alternitive comitment ceremony. my partner and i are looking for a theamed service."

Not to come off as the e-mail Nazi, but I don't feel compelled to do legwork for a person who can't be bothered to find the shift button on his home computer. A better example:

"My partner and I are coming to Las Vegas soon and was wondering if you could help us find someone to perform an alternative commitment ceremony. We're looking for a theme service."

Not to come off as the e-mail Nazi, but as someone who reads pages upon pages of e-mail daily it would be refreshing to see someone take the time to construct a grammatically correct, complete thought. As I was telling someone the other day in an e-mail:

"I'll have to respond to your message later, after I go postcard shopping."