Join the ranks of the great communicators

With 36 billion emails sent daily the opportunity to go wrong is greater than ever before. The pressure of work and the speed of reply when coupled to the fact that communication takes place devoid of eye-contact and tone of voice make for an incendiary combination.

Clearly there is a need for a commonly accepted etiquette when using email. Etiquette that’s based on common sense and which can be applied by the private as well as the corporate user.

Indeed, the last few years have seen some of the biggest names in the corporate world vie with individuals for the title of ‘The biggest misuse of email’. Enron, Norwich Union, British Gas, Orange and most recently the Merseyside Police are mentioned alongside Blakey and Claire Swire.

Written for the everyday email user who often shifts in role between private individual and corporate employee Email Etiquette lays the ground rules, outlines the pitfalls and gives useful suggestions for avoiding them.

Full of helpful hints and advice on how to get the most out of email, increase efficiency through safe practices and learn how to better use what the new technology offers Email Etiquette, had it been available then (and its suggestions had been followed), would have kept all those names above from ever becoming public cases.

"Email is still relatively new and its use is growing exponentially," says Cool Publications Projects Editor, David Amerland, who commissioned the book. "Just because everyone can type something up and press a button to send it off does not mean that it’s easy to use or that the effectiveness of email communication cannot be improved. Indeed we may just be getting into a case where the very ease with which a technology can be implemented works to have an adversarial effect on what it’s trying to achieve, in this case, effective communication."

Email Etiquette is one of those books which everyone should have downloaded on their desktop.