The Lost Art of Sending an Email

Hi there,

Want to know what I find beautiful? Well formatted emails.

You know what I mean. There's nothing worse than opening an email and seeing a huge slab of text, forcing you to do some heavy lifting to find out exactly what the sender is trying to say. 

Conversely, the best emails start with a nice little greeting, then a bit of an introductory sentence, followed by a couple of meatier lines or paragraphs. Yet the way these emails are written, you don't have to work hard to find meaning. Your eye is guided through nicely. 

They even look good from a distance, possessing a nice symmetry as they go from short to long to short again. I'd hope that if people saw my emails from afar they'd be able to tell that I was a good emailer without reading the actual words.

There might be a little one line joke or something to finish off the email and reward the recipient for reading.

All that's left is the sign off,

and it's done.

Gonna Browse Like it's 1999

Your mission this week is to watch this video:

Did you pick the surprise ending? You probably did, firstly because there are only a handful of companies in the world that are presumptuous enough to attempt to link an entire generation with their product (Coca-Cola and Microsoft among them) and secondly because the product name is right there in the video title.

The first time I saw the ad I was at an advantage because I had no idea what it was for. In fact I was quite enjoying the video until the last seconds when the infamous ‘e’ was revealed and I frantically tried clean my eyeballs with sandpaper. Ads are frequently turning to the surprise brending (brand + ending = brending) and it’s an especially useful technique when you want to get the consumer on board before they realise what a horrible thing it is you’re trying to sell.

Column Five, the advertising agency responsible for the ad, have uploaded on their blog an interesting dissection of their creative process. It’s interesting not only because it gives you an insight into the mechanics of designing a successful ad campaign, but also because it provides priceless examples of advertising jargon such as:

To ensure the video was both newsworthy and shareworthy, our creative team worked closely with our strategic communications team in developing the concept with Internet Explorer.

I love this sort of thing. It is my dream to one day to be a member of a ‘strategic communications team’ whose job it is to develop concepts. In order to showcase my skills to any prospective employers, I’ll demonstrate that I understand advertising by translating the above sentence into English:

We paid some people to make Internet Explorer appear less shit.

If you want to hire me you can leave a comment at the bottom of the blog. My demands are that I work from home and get thirty weeks of paid holiday per year.

Make no mistake, selling the latest version of Internet Explorer in 2013 is a tough gig. Despite the fact that IE still holds a significant market share—mostly due to its widespread use in the corporate world where office computers are preloaded with the software and the user doesn’t get a choice—Explorer is definitely uncool. It has suffered from speed and security issues and has been severely hampered by sleeker and more user-friendly browsers such as Safari, Firefox and Chrome.  It is—as Microsoft have gone to a lot of trouble to point out—an outdated product.

Whether or not the new Internet Explorer 10 actually is an improved product is somewhat beside the point of the campaign. Column Five realised that even if Microsoft had managed to develop a product that was much closer to the level of its competitors, years of brand damage couldn’t be undone by a hard sell along the lines of ‘Internet Explorer 10 is NEW and BETTER and you should try it!’ And so they turned to the tried and true advertising technique of blurring the line between product and consumer emotion. As Greg Foyster notes in his article on advertising, there came a point in the twentieth century when ad companies had realised that instead of selling products based on their inherent features, they could make a lot of money by ‘[linking] the consumption of material goods with non-material needs, which were endless.’ The result is an ad like ‘Child of the Nineties’, in which Column Five and Microsoft aren’t selling you Internet Explorer—they’re selling you nostalgia.

I’m guessing that probably close to eighty per cent of the people reading this blog were born sometime between 1985 and 1995, thereby making us ‘children of the nineties’. For most people, the memory of childhood is pleasant—an innocent, carefree time unburdened by the stress of adult life.  I’m sure there are at least a few objects in that ad that you distinctly remember owning, using, wearing, or playing with. The hyper-realistic images presented in the ad help transport you back to a seemingly less complicated, happier time.

Column Five and Microsoft hope that this nostalgia will get intertwined in your brain with Internet Explorer when you watch the ad, and even if you don’t start using the browser, you hopefully will have started to change your perception of it. As Column Five themselves note, ‘that’s the impact we wanted more than anything: a reframing of IE’s relationship with Gen Y.’ Since the 1980s modern advertising has been as much about selling you a brand as it has been about selling you a product. And in this case the brand is of primary concern anyway, because you don’t actually have to buy IE10—it’s available for free. It is brand perception—not price—that has a major influence on your decision to use the Internet Explorer or not.

To an extent the ad has been successful. It has struck a chord with many tech bloggers and online commentators about Microsoft’s ‘creativity’, and has also given the company a great starting point from which to launch IE into the 21^st century. But I do wonder whether the campaign will achieve its longer term goal of actually getting people to use Internet Explorer. Browsers are such unobtrusive things when they work well and many people only made the switch to other browsers when Explorer became virtually impossible to use. To this end, if you’re happy with your current browser, and the new IE offers a similar experience, why would you bother to switch back? Microsoft have done a good job of attempting to wipe the slate clean and starting again with IE, but if they really want people to embrace the browser in the future they will once again have to become trendsetters and not simply copycats of already successful products. The effectiveness of the nostalgia approach is limited, and somehow I can’t imagine Microsoft waiting another thirteen years before they attempt to make Internet Explorer appear ‘cool’ again. 

H4CK3D

This morning I awoke to a true 21st century nightmare—my email account security had been ‘compromised’ (you can thank the military for that euphemism) and my good e-name had been soiled in order to sell some sort of working-from-home scam. Slightly shaken, I duly changed my passwords and performed a virus scan on my computer, which made me feel like a character in a Tom Cruise technothriller.

Just as late 19th century Britons had a vague sense of unease over what seemed to them an inevitable invasion from Germany, so too do I have an underlying anxiety of the consequences if my online world were to be breached. Unfortunately the British unease resulted in wonderful literature like H.G Wells’ War of the Worlds; the best you’ll get from me is a blog post in 12pt Verdana.

I actually don’t particularly like using the word ‘hack’ in this case, as it seems too violent for what happened. As far as I can tell no bank or other sensitive details were obtained. For me, true ‘hacking’ is when somebody changes all your passwords so you can’t login (bad), drains your bank account (worse) and likes and comments on hundreds of Facebook photos of people you barely know (tragic). But I can't really think (or be bothered to think) of such an efficient way of describing what happened and so you can safely assume that every appearance of ‘hack’ within this post—including the title—was forced upon me against my will by the Laziness Fairy that lives on my shoulder. 

Although I escaped with relatively little ‘real’ damage, the spam was rather embarrassingly sent out to my parents, close friends, bosses and real estate agent. It would therefore appear the hacking program had some sort of algorithm that selected frequently used email addresses; but it also obscurely chose people I’ve either emailed once or have not spoken to in years. So apologies to the membership department at the Melbourne Football Club, and also to Victorian Legislative Council member Greg Barber (I can’t even remember what I emailed him about—something filled with pent-up second year university rage, no doubt).

In any case, the level of embarrassment was about the same as walking around for half a day with spinach stuck between your teeth. Some people obviously notice and don’t say anything, yet others are kind enough to quietly pull you aside and hand you a toothpick. Certainly not mortifying, but it’s not really the kind of attention you want to draw to yourself. Thankfully for all concerned the spam was an offer to increase your income and not your genitalia.

Although the only thing that was truly hurt was my ego, there is still a sense of unease about being hacked. It’s forced me to re-evaluate all the information I have floating around out there, and come to terms with the idea that anybody determined enough could probably get to it. One of the main issues we now deal with is our complacency with the online security. This is especially true for members of my generation, who grew up alongside the development of the internet, and quite often made choices as teenagers about email and social networking accounts that still affect our adult lives. Even as adults, do many of us take our security all that seriously? I would guess not. I know many people who use the same password across multiple accounts, including the same password for their social media as for their banking.

The reality is that for a few days (weeks if I’m lucky) I’ll have a heightened sense of my online security, and be more careful about where and when I access personal information. I’m careful to a certain extent anyway, but I do worry that before long I’ll slip back into complacency and possibly leave myself open for somebody to do some real damage. As with any break in—online or otherwise—the worst feeling is that somebody I don’t know went through my stuff. I can’t decide whether the fact that in this case it was probably a computer makes that notion more terrifying or not. Alongside my general anxiety of my personal information being compromised, I am resigned to the fact that humanity is destined to meet its ultimate fate at the hands of machines. I’m self-important enough to be worried that hacking my Hotmail account is Phase One of their sinister plan.

Macquarie and Me

Disclaimer: If you’re not into extreme things like dictionaries, obscure words and timed challenges then I suggest you stop reading now.

For those of you that have decided to stick around, you’re in for a treat. I was recently forced to buy a physical copy of the Macquarie Concise Dictionary for a university subject I’m taking. You can imagine how unhappy I was to be spending money on what I viewed as an unnecessary lump of pulp, since all the information contained within (and much, much more) is available (for free) online. I was even more unhappy when I realised that dictionaries come in editions (because language evolves, forsooth!) and so the book I bought was only going to be unnecessary for a couple of years before it became unnecessary and outdated.  Combine all this with the inevitable crushed vertebrae that I’m guaranteed to sustain from carrying it in my backpack to class and you’ll understand that my new dictionary and I were off to a shaky start.

Partly in the interest of science—but mostly in a petty attempt to validate my theories on the pointlessness of paper dictionaries—I decided to conduct a quick test to see how much quicker using an online dictionary really was, and if there were any benefits of using a paper dictionary at all. I used a generator to create two lists of ten random words, one set of which I would look up via the Macquarie Online dictionary, the other via my new Macquarie Concise.

I’d highly recommend not stopping to think too long about the fact that I actually spent ten minutes of my life in a dimly lit room conducting this test, because frankly the whole thing is kind of weird and pathetic, and if you overthink it then you’ll feel sad for me, and the last thing weird pathetic people like me need is your pity, thank you very much.

On to the science. I vaguely recall learning how to structure a proper report in Year 8 and so I will proceed with the time honoured scientific tradition of winging things based on half-remembered facts.

Aim: To see if using an online dictionary is quicker, more efficient, and generally better than a paper dictionary.

Hypothesis: The online dictionary will be significantly quicker.

Method: I already outlined the method above, but for posterity’s sake here are the two sets of words:

Online: tiara, meal, ova, tidied, nab, kilogram, splint, began, laser, award

Paper: bomb, outcrop, smoke, era, noble, muscle, luncheon, ape, clean, finance

Results:

Online: 1 minute 26 seconds
Paper: 3 minutes 18 seconds

Using the online version was therefore more than twice as fast as using the paper version.

Discussion: At first I thought a minute or two didn’t seem like much of a difference, but it’s the relative difference between the two that count. If I were to extrapolate these results over the course of a lifetime I would end up spending extra years looking things up in a paper dictionary as opposed to online. You may think this wouldn't matter to somebody who went to the trouble of conducting this test in the first place, but even I have to draw the line somewhere.

It’s worth mentioning that using the paper dictionary quickly highlighted how unfamiliar I am with the order of the English alphabet. I actually had to quickly sing the song in my head every time I got to certain tricky spots such as ‘l-m-n-o-p’ and ‘q-r-s-t-u-v’. If somebody would like to comment and reassure me that they have a similar experience when using a dictionary that would be great, because otherwise I am genuinely worried that I have a learning disability which was never properly addressed when I was a child and has since been shoddily covered up with more impressive—but frankly less fundamentally important—topics like the Russian revolution and Kuhn’s paradigm theory.

Now, for the unexpected shock, which will no doubt have people writing angry emails to me demanding I retract my words (actually, I’m not going to pretend I get emails about this blog, because nobody has ever emailed me about it. I really appreciate you reading it though, and that means more to me than a thousand angry emails ever could). Despite my initial hatred for it, and the fact that it’s really inefficient, I found that I enjoyed using the paper dictionary. Before you accuse me of being a Luddite (I think I accuse myself of being a Luddite much more than anybody ever has or ever will. I have a blog called ‘the Digital Printing Press’, for god’s sake) I’d like you to hear me out.

First of all, there is something to be said for the actual physical presence of the dictionary. Stephen King observed that words have weight and my Macquarie—containing all the words—naturally has a lot of weight, both figuratively and literally.* As mentioned, this is a hindrance when toting it around (which is why ‘toting a dictionary’ is a verb-noun combination used about as often as ‘milking a gnat’) but kind of satisfying when it’s sitting on your desk. The thing just appears definitive and authoritative.

Speaking of authoritative, another nice thing about owning a dictionary is that you know, to a reasonable extent, that the information contained within it is reliable and consistent. I shudder to think how much work must go in to actually writing/editing a dictionary, and because of this I’m sure that the information contained within is taken very seriously by serious people in tweed jackets and plaid skirts. Contrast this with the compilers of online dictionaries, whom I imagine to be croc-wearing, Hackey sack-kicking layabouts much more interested in gaining revenue from ad click-throughs than the accuracy of their lexicography. 

The issue of consistency and accuracy is particularly important when you’re talking about words used in a particular region, like Australian English. I personally would not have a clue if ‘dictionary.com’ or ‘thefreedictionary.com’ is better for Australian users, and trying to find out this information on their websites was tricky and seemed to defeat the whole purpose of quick and easy service. Granted, the Macquarie dictionary is available at a price online (I conducted the test under a free trial subscription) and it has the benefit of being updated constantly, but if you’re the sort of person who pays for an online dictionary subscription then I imagine you’re also the sort of person who likes to have a dictionary sitting on your bookshelf anyway. In short, I suppose online dictionaries are generally good for quick, casual use, but if you’re serious about words then it’s hard to go past the authority and consistency of an actual book.

Another reason I liked the paper format was that it had great hidden benefits. The nature of flipping through pages when you’re using the dictionary means that you often stumble across great words accidentally. During the course of the challenge the word ‘feneckapants’ caught my eye. According to the Macquarie, it is ‘a colloquial term of endearment, used especially with children’, but I would imagine that if you try and call a child a ‘feneckapants’ you’re in for some distressed looks from the children’s parents, not to mention the child itself. I actually don’t think the meaning of feneckapants is as important as just seeing the actual combination of letters that make up the word so close together. It’s as if all the cool, edgy letters of the English alphabet (like f, a, k and p) have gotten together and formed a sort of supergroup. These are the sort of opportunistic discoveries that online dictionaries just can't provide.

I’m surprised (no doubt you are too) that I’ve been able to wring a thousand words out of dictionary usage so I will wrap things up here, and leave you with the thought that anybody who uses a paper dictionary may feel good doing it, but they ultimately risk being called an antiquated pretentious idiot. Personally I think this is a little unfair, as I take umbrage at being called ‘antiquated’.

*Okay, so maybe not all the words because I actually have the ‘concise’ version, but the title is really just an in-joke by lexicographers who no doubt think it is hilarious to label a 1,500 page tome ‘concise’.