Ecards and their effect on comminication

Email has rapidly fostered a growing trend to replace special occasion communications with electronic ones. Ecards are now available for all holidays, personal milestones, social events and public announcements.  Just as with any personal communication, a significant part of content is diluted or removed when email is involved.  As described in other chapters, body language, tone and parts of interpersonal contact are eliminated or experienced differently.
       
Proper Netiquette for ecards should be practiced and maintained with the same standards of vigilance and discipline to insure that the desired result of the communication is maximized.  Whereby much direct contact, mail or letters can be replaced by email to some extent, there is a further diminishing value when ecards or their variants are used.  Forms of ecards are available as readily as the display racks of stationary stores.  These can, for the most part, be serious, humorous or witty as the following list shows:

Business Promotion Retirement by employer Firing	Graduation All levels	Announcements New Employee Tributes Promotions
Engagements	Obituaries Notifications	Major Losses Relatives
Anniversary Marriage Work	Religious Baptism All Denominations
Holidays Valentine Halloween St Patricks Day All Nationalities	Parties Invitations Cyber Parties	Mothers /Fathers Day
Birthdays Child Adult Family Coworker Customer Milestone	Get Well Serious Humorous	Relationship Separation
Cartoons Political	Thank You All occasions

One should note that many ecards are free but some of these point to advertisements.  This may not be the image one would like to show. Lastly, the message or tone an email conveys should be chosen very carefully. If there is any doubt that an ecard will be well received, it should not be considered.

 

Word redundancies in email

Given the fact that most email are relatively brief, a significant amount of repetitive words occur. Many times these duplications happen when an email sender's primary language is not English. Below are some of the most common. If the reader goes through these several times, it will greatly reduce this happening and result in clearer, more concise communication! Any suggestion for adding others not mentioned here, would be appreciated.

Redundant Pairs

        Most email writers cannot avoid using redundant pairs and this is a common mistake made even in brief messages.  Some generic examples of these include:

·         past                  remembrances

·         basic                 fundamentals

·         true                   facts

·         honest               truth

·         terrible              tragedy

·         final                  outcome

·         unexpected                surprise

·         past                  history

·         future                plans

·         boundary           line

     There are many, many more of these and the best way to reduce their usage is to maintain good Netiquette in messages and to edit text before sending.

Redundant Categories

        Email senders can reduce verbosity by being mindful to avoid descriptions which are not necessary.

        large in size

        often times

        of a bright color

        heavy in weight

        period in time

        round in shape

        at an early time

        economic field

        of cheap quality

        in a confused state

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