Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe

Completion Date: May 2007
Publication Year: 2007
Pages: 256
Received from Random House in 2007

When should you email, and when should you call, fax, or just show up?

What is the crucial—and most often overlooked—line in an email?

What is the best strategy when you send (in anger or error) a potentially career-ending electronic bombshell?

Enter Send. Whether you email just a little or never stop, use a desktop or a handheld, here, at last, is an authoritative and delightful book that shows how to write the perfect email—at work, at school, or anywhere. Send also points out the numerous (but not always obvious) times when email can be the worst option and might land you in hot water (or even jail!).

The secret is, of course, to think before you click. Send is nothing short of a survival guide for the digital age—wise, brimming with good humor, and filled with helpful lessons from the authors’ own email experiences (and mistakes). In short: absolutely e-ssential.

So, do you think before you email? You would think that since there is time to think about it, that you can delete sentences easily, but people all over the world are using bad email etiquette. These two men have taken it upon themselves to educate the world in just how emails should be handled, the rules for whether you should email, write a letter, phone, or fax.

I learned a few things, like after spending four years in university not using contractions, you actually should use contractions in emails. This book has its humour too, so it was very readable. In a world where email is everything, it is good to have a book to direct you in the right direction.

To read an excerpt from the book, click here.

Now, here's the question of the week: Do you think before you email? Any embarassing email stories that anyone wants to share?