Tuesday, November 6, 2007

A spate

I used the word spate in an email at work today. I was quite proud of myself, as I don't believe that I have used this word in any email before. Spate. It's an interesting word. A spate of this, a spate of that. It's like one of those words that I use, thinking that I understand its meaning, only to stealthily pop open a Internet explorer window to quickly look up the word at dictionary.com. I used it right. I thought I had, but I also discovered that the British use of the word refers to weather or something. Bad weather.

A spate of weather.

Another thing I've started doing in my emails is placing a small short little sentence SMACK in the middle of a group of heavy handed meticulous paragraphs, just to emphasize a point, and maybe take the reader a little off guard. Just so they are not so comfortable with my email. I'd hate for them to get lulled into a false sense of boredom or mundanity (looking up mundanity on d..i..c...) on their way down to my "Please contact me if you have any questions or comments on this issue." That's a must if you don't want the person on the receiving end to just take all the information that you mind numbingly rattled in a barely able to be strung together group of thoughts about nothing that you would ever imagine yourself really needing to explain to someone in any way to understand that its important that he or she should contact you if it's not exactly clear even if its not exactly clear what should be clear.

Which brings me back to spate. As the email itself being a spate of near pointless, but not quite pointless, bits of tasks, reminders, and of course, factoids, that really serve no other reason than to remind the person that someone is reminding them.

It's why I love email. The fact that you can get away with throwing a quick two-sentencer out there just to pretend that you are on top of the thing that you are supposed to be on top of. And you don't actually have to answer any questions in the process. "Hey, Jack, its Edward. Have you accomplished the tasks that were assigned?" How wonderfully vague. Imagine calling someone with that question, and the backup you would require. And, of course, when arrives in email, the poor sod receiving the email... oh, I would not like to be that guy, especially if I didn't actually assign him any tasks. The hours wasted reviewing, refreshing, trying to recall. But not my hours. He can't, won't, just email me back and say "What tasks?" Why, that would be unprofessional. I mean, it WOULD be unprofessional if I did give him tasks, which I didn't, but he probably doesn't know that. It's a spate! (d..i..c....)

Not unlike a blog.

If you have any questions on this entry, please do not hesitate to provide your comments.

Thank you,