Explaining Difficult Things, page 12

A word here about email, continued

Email has a vocabulary and conventions of its own. Quite a few sentences forgo the initial capitalization and are all lowercase. Uppercase words denote screaming. Salutations and punctuation are, for the most part, a relic of the past. New abbreviations such as fwiw (“for what it’s worth”) and emoticons have spread as acceptable usage.

The barbarians are at the gates! Email is a foul corruption of writing!

As if.

I think not.

In fact, the existence of email gets many people to write more than they would have otherwise. The more you write, the better a writer you become.

Writing for email is writing in a different style. It is a demotic, vernacular style.

Like any other kind of writing, emails can be written well, or they can be written poorly.

Write plenty of emails!

I urge you to write yours well, using cutting-edge email conventions and shortcuts. You should write the best emails you can write, using the tools, tricks, tips, and techniques taught in this book. Become a master email stylist! Review your emails before you send them, and edit them until they are right.

Becoming a good stylist

How do you become a master email stylist?

More generally, how do you develop a good writing style?

There are no hard and fast rules about style, and it is not a good idea to try too hard to develop your own style.

Here are some suggestions that will help you become a better stylist:

• Strive for clarity.

• Keep everything as simple as possible.

• Practice, practice, practice.

• Edit until you get it right.

• Do not go to law school, because learning to write in a legal style is terrible for your non-legal writing style (learning to write academically isn’t so great either).

• Do not consciously try to develop a personal style.

Continued next page

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