Paul Babicki Interview!
The following is the article written about Paul Babicki in the Princeton Packet on 7/19/2013. This sums up some of the specifics of my book, "NetiquetteIQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve Enhance, and Add Power to Your Email". The link to the article is:
http://www.centraljersey.com/articles/2013/07/19/
the_princeton_packet/lifestyle/doc51e8254a8920d088434729.txt
Here is the article itself:
You probably think you’re a pretty good email writer, right? Well, Paul Babicki has news for you.
According to Mr. Babicki, a paltry 5 percent of emails are high-quality, effective correspondences. About 80 percent are spam, many others are things you don’t need (being CC’d on something that isn’t important to you, for example), and others are just bad.
The bad ones are marred by grammar and spelling errors, a lack of civility, and “textspeak,” according to Mr. Babicki. That’s why he has written the book “NetiquetteIQ: A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email,” which is scheduled to be released Aug. 15.
”All of this new technology really is great because you send more letters in one click than you could send in a lifetime (but) it seems as though that’s not helping,” says Mr. Babicki, a Hopewell resident. “In other words, for all the good it does, it creates as many problems, and if you don’t deal with those problems, then you’re not going to be able to utilize the technology the best way you could.”
The book is described by Mr. Babicki as the ultimate guide to email, and is part of his Hopewell-based Netiquette project, which also includes a blog (netiquetteiq.blogspot.com) and other products and services.
Mr. Babicki has worked in IT sales and marketing for 25 years, and like all of us, has seen his share of bad emails. But it was a school supply that prompted the Netiquette endeavor. After purchasing some spiral notebooks for his daughters, he noticed the notebooks included a chart. Expecting the chart to be the periodic table, he saw that it was a guide to abbreviations for texting and email, the kind of stuff that would have people writing “R u going 2 the party?” for example. Encouraging that kind of writing was too much.
”When I see emails (with such language) that come in from very intelligent, well-to-do people, really any demographic, any age, I’m appalled,” he says. “And particularly with younger people who obviously have never written a real letter. That’s OK, I guess, but at least you can make it so that it’s polite and clear and answers questions and so forth.”
The good news, he says, is that writing quality emails can help you stand out by creating effective means of communications as you search for jobs, advance in your career or seek customer service. To illustrate the power of good writing, Mr. Babicki includes an email version of the Gettysburg Address, featuring the abbreviation “G’burg” and lines like “so we all would B free. Now we’re @ war. We just had a big battle & I wanted 2 pay tribute 2 the dead . . .”
”If (Abraham Lincoln) wrote it in today’s writing (style), would it be a famous document in 200 years? Of course not,” Mr. Babicki says.
Other bad habits he’s noticed are one-word responses, empty subject fields, answers to questions without context, and attempts at humor that don’t translate if the recipient doesn’t know the writer.
The book offers a comprehensive guide to emailing, covering various topics, such as politeness, language, the subject line, the cc and bcc fields, threads, signatures, grammar, spelling, punctuation and much more. Various appendices include helpful information including “Power and Beautiful Words,” “Irritating Phrases,” how to close emails of different styles (business, friendly, informal) file extensions, poor passwords and more.
Email has been around a while, and today’s youngsters don’t remember a world without it. Mr. Babicki says children need to be made aware of the consequences that occur not only from ineffective emails, but also of sending inappropriate emails. A quick Google search will result in several articles about people got into trouble because of inappropriate emails.
”What you need to do with (children), in terms of the Internet, because you can’t keep them 100 percent away, is you need to educate them on the dangers,” Mr. Babicki says. “And part of my book deals with that, the bullying. The fact is that (with) email, if you say something, it’s not going to go away, there’s a record of it, and it can come back to haunt you.”
And he admits that he has had some struggles with email.
”I’m getting really good at not emailing people when I’m mad,” he says. “If you email somebody when you’re mad, almost anything that happens is not good. You say something bad, you can ruin a relationship, whether it’s business or casual. Your tone comes across in a hostile manner . . . If you send an angry email, it may take you one minute to send it, and you’ll regret it for years.”
When asked who his “NetiquetteIQ” target audience is, Mr. Babicki responds by promising that his answer is not a sales pitch, then says, “There are 4 billion email users in the world, OK? Anyone.”
“NetiquetteIQ: A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email” will be available on Aug. 15 at Amazon.com. For more information, go to www.netiquetteiq.com
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We will be publishing a book on Netiquette shortly entitled "NetiquetteIQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email".
Also there will be an email "IQ" test on our website:
Paul Babicki
+Serkan Gecmen
serkan@netiquetteiq.com
Happy emailing and good Netiquette!
