The new digital etiquette we’re all being judged on

According to The Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, we misinterpret the tone of half of the emails we receive. Yep, for one in every two messages, we are totally missing the vibe. No wonder everyone is feeling a touch paranoid.

Given that up to 80% of professionals want to work from home some or all of the time, Erica Dhawan’s book Digital Body Language: how to build trust and connection no matter the distance is timely.

Especialy as it’s not just tone… I just had the following email exchange:

• “Any chance we can speak at noon tomorrow?”

• “Sure! What time, I have a meeting a 2.30pm”

ARGH! (Naturally I would never do such a thing 😬)

The headline findings:

✅ The rise of what we previously saw as gauche emojis, teenage punctuation, and even SHOUTY CAPS, is down to our need to be more obvious in our email tone. We should use them, but with care:

• 😊 is warm but lacks power

• !! is enthusiastic - fine if, say, you’ve won a big contract

• !!!!! tilts towards unhinged

• ????? reads as FURIOUS

Obviously on WhatsApp dramatic emojis and too much punctuation are mandatory.

✅ Decide your online brand—warm, formal, concise, whatever—and stick to it. People get very stressy when the gushy enthusiastic person responds to a new idea with ‘Fine’. They don’t know it’s typed while running for the bus, and waste the next 24 hours wondering what they did to offend.

✅ Power imbalance is where online exchanges often go wrong; Erica cites a joke from Morgan Stanley where the more senior you are, the shorter your emails are:

Junior: Thank you so much!

Mid-level: Thanks

Senior: Thx

Top dog: T

• If you have the power, err towards warmth and take a little extra care: deciphering your typos might be someone’s full-time job.

• If you don’t have power, be concise and clear and follow their tone.

✅ When writing and interpreting emails, bear in mind age and gender. Women often feel pressured to use more punctuation and emojis to avoid looking cold and distant. Similarly, older emailers are likely to tend towards formality.

❌ Ban yourself from using passive aggressive messages: “As per my last email’, ‘For future reference’, ‘Going forward’and, my favourite, ‘Updates on this??’.

When your fingers twitch to write them, pick up the phone and dial instead.

Ultimately, success comes down to matching tone, being thoughtful, careful and good at proof reading. Slightly boring,but extremely polite.

Sincerely,

Christine

PS. ❌ As if! Sincerely SUCKS as a sign off 😉