It’s rare, but some days I can count the number of words I say on two hands. Yesterday was one of those days.

Hello. Yes. No Thanks. Thank you.

Hey. That’s it. Thanks.

Seth Godin wonders:

In a world where twitter and facebook and blogs can spread an idea around the world in a few seconds, how do you have a conversation with someone in confidence?

I hadn’t really really thought about it until a few weeks ago when the contents of one of my emails (one I thought was private) found its way into a blog post.

Seth proposes that we include “NFYB” (Not For Your Blog) in emails that we want to remain private. While I like the idea, unless it finds widespread usage, the acronym is a bit clumsy.

I saw the following footer the other day on a listserv that I am on that I thought hit the mark.

This e-mail is [ ] bloggable [x] ask first [ ] private

I like the third category here that Seth NFYB doesn’t address, namely, that I wouldn’t mind certain people blogging the contents of a private email if I trust them and/or have talked to them about what they intend to blog.

Either way, I think it is a fascinating point that will only become more important in the future. Until shared cultural norms are in place, being explicit about the intended audience of your emails cannot hurt.

Excerpt from a recent conversation with a friend over GoogleTalk within Gmail wherein he discovers GoogleTalk for the first time.

me: you busy?
friend: whoa! is this something recent? i’ve never seen this function before.
me: hahahahahaahahahaahah!

I thought this article about email sign-offs was a bit of a filler piece for the Post Thanksgiving Monday until it happened to me today.

This morning, after exchanging a string of one-line question and response emails with a colleague (I would also like to blame it on my head cold), I simply forgot to add the niceties that typically go along with an email to anyone outside of the office.

In response to a very helpful email I received from a professional contact outside of the office, I wrote:

“i’ll look there. thanks.”

I did not greet the recipient by name. I did not sign off with a traditional “Best”, “Kind Regards”, or even “Sincerely”. Hell… I didn’t even give my fragments (let’s face it they weren’t sentences) the proper capitalization.

I didn’t even notice my mistake until the recipient replied and nearly apologized for his previous email. It was clear, though he didn’t say it outright, that he thought that I had taken offense to his prior note. Why else would I have been so terse?

It’s at times like these that I am reminded that, while digital modes of communication (email, IM, blogs, etc) make it so much easier to connect, they require much more care and attention than we typically give them. We have only begun to develop nascent tools in the digital realm (think and LOL) to solve the problems which non-verbal cues, tone and timbre have been smoothing over for generations in our face to face (and voice to voice) interactions.