Saturday, June 20, 2015

Netiquette Educational Principals For College Students - Via Netiquette IQ



=============================================================
From Insidehighered.com
Re: Your Recent Email to Your Professor
April 16, 2015

Paul T. Corrigan and Cameron Hunt McNabb
Dear College Student,
If your professor has sent you a link to this page, two things are likely true. First, you probably sent an email that does not represent you in a way you would like to be represented. Second, while others might have scolded you, mocked you or despaired over the future of the planet because of your email, you sent it to someone who wants to help you represent yourself better.
In part, because only a click or swipe or two separate emails from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and texting, the lines between professional emails and more informal modes of writing have become blurred, and many students find the conventions of professional emails murky. We think we can help sort things out.
In the age of social media, many students approach emailing similar to texting and other forms of digital communication, where the crucial conventions are brevity and informality. But most college teachers consider emails closer to letters than to text messages. This style of writing calls for more formality, more thoroughness and more faithful adherence (sometimes bordering on religious adherence) to the conventions of Edited Standard Written English -- that is, spelling, punctuation, capitalization and syntax.
These different ways of writing are just that -- different ways of writing. The letter approach to emails is not always and forever better (or worse) than the texting approach. Knowing how and when to use one or the other -- based on why you are writing and whom you are writing to -- makes all the difference. So, if you use emojis, acronyms, abbreviations, etc., when texting your friends, you are actually demonstrating legitimate, useful writing skills. But you aren’t if you do the same thing when emailing professors who view emails as letters.
Effective writing requires shaping your words according to your audience, purpose and genre (or type of writing, e.g., an academic email). Together these are sometimes called the rhetorical situation. Some of the key conventions for the rhetorical situation of emailing a professor are as follows:
1. Use a clear subject line. The subject “Rhetorical Analysis Essay” would work a bit better than “heeeeelp!” (and much better than the unforgivable blank subject line).
================================================================

**Important note** - contact our company for very powerful solutions for IP management (IPv4 and IPv6, security, firewall and APT solutions:

www.tabularosa.net

In addition to this blog, Netiquette IQ has a website with great assets which are being added to on a regular basis. I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, “Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". My new book, “You’re Hired! Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes. . . And Get That Job!” will be published soon follow by a trilogy of books on Netiquette for young people. You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

 www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

 If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio  Additionally, I provide content for an online newsletter via paper.li. I have also established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. Further, I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and have been a contributor to numerous blogs and publications. 

Lastly, I am the founder and president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a company that provides “best of breed” products for network, security and system management and services. Tabula Rosa has a new blog and Twitter site which offers great IT product information for virtually anyone.
==============================================

Thursday, June 18, 2015

Netiquette IQ Blog Of 6/18/2015 - Some Nice Items About Stupid Emails



 Many articles on the Internet exist regarding suggestion on writing smart email. Many, if not most, of these are very simplistic. Here are some good ideas about avoiding "stupid" emails.
================================================


Sajeel Qureshi – huffingtonpost.com
Posted: 06/16/2015 9:22 pm EDT Updated: 06/17/2015 2:59 pm EDT
The Stupid Emails You Need To Stop Writing
Email messages are the bane of existence for desk-jobbers everywhere. Most people maintain their inbox a lot better than they maintain their personal or family lives. Unfortunately, our inboxes have been polluted by horrible messages and unnecessary communication. Do you find yourself writing these six types of emails?
1. The Retirement Letter -- Saying bye to everyone before you leave? Really? Here's what happens when you leave a job. You either quit on your teammates (literally, not figuratively... literally) or you do something that forces them to kick you off the team (and you get fired). In either case your note could just say "So long suckers! See you on LinkedIn!" And it'd aptly do the job in either scenario. Penning a send-off is a total red card.
2. The One-word gratitude email -- Ah yes, the infamous "Thanks" email, to show gratitude for an email received and acknowledged, but not read. Stop playing with our emotions gratitude-email writer! The only thing worse than this email is the one with the word 'Thanks' abbreviated. I'm looking at you "Thx" and "Thnks" email writers. These email writers are great at responding to emails, but lousy Wheel Of Fortune players and evidently too poor to buy vowels for their emails.
3. The Children's Novel -- This email is written by micro-managers, middlemen (and women), and volunteer point of contacts everywhere. You know what I'm talking about. That email with all sorts of screenshots and gigantic arrows pointing out basic instructions. All in the body of an email and wonderfully copied to 14 recipients. This graphic novel of an email is meant to give clarity, but all it really gives is inbox Ebola.
4. The Thesis -- Email is short for electronic mail. Not electronic essay. Does your email need citations double-spacing and proofreading by a tutor before you send it? If so, work harder and be more concise. We live in an ADD-world where people multi-task their multi-tasking. You can't really expect someone you don't know to block off 35 minutes to read a transcript of your latest TED talk and then write a response to it. Blog posts are meant for your blog. Not for Outlook.
5. The Mystery -- Sending an email without providing ample details will do the one thing you don't want to do. Create more emails. Consider this. I sent an email to every company email address I had that basically said "Intruder Alert!" I got a myriad of responses -- the gist of them were:
"What?"
"Where?"
"How?" and
"I'm out of the office and unavailable to check my email."
Those are all viable responses because my email was a real cliffhanger. No details and insufficient information. Reading a Mystery email is like watching a TV show that breaks for commercial, and then doesn't come back. On the flip side it does make your email go viral since you get all sorts of responses. Is unintended viral marketing a thing yet?
6. The Front-page News -- Look, the Internet is full of nonsense. If you don't believe me, just look in the comments section on any article related to sports, politics or religion. Your email that is directed at one person and sent to 4,500 other people adds to that nonsense. Why are you forcing people to read something they don't need to? Want to send an email to Jim in accounting? Great! Send an email to Jim in an accounting. And no one else. Save the email marketing for Constant Contact. Not your corporate email account.
Most of us can't get through the day (or a trip to the washroom) without checking our email. Let's all do one another a favor and make sure those email checks in the middle of the night or while we're waiting for our significant other to respond to our marriage proposal (unless you proposed via a calendar invite) are a lot cleaner. Use these tricks to get a 91 percent open-rate on your cold emails as well.
===============================================
**Important note** - contact our company for very powerful solutions for IP management (IPv4 and IPv6, security, firewall and APT solutions:

www.tabularosa.net

In addition to this blog, Netiquette IQ has a website with great assets which are being added to on a regular basis. I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, “Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". My new book, “You’re Hired! Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes. . . And Get That Job!” will be published soon follow by a trilogy of books on Netiquette for young people. You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

 www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

 If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio  Additionally, I provide content for an online newsletter via paper.li. I have also established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. Further, I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and have been a contributor to numerous blogs and publications. 

Lastly, I am the founder and president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a company that provides “best of breed” products for network, security and system management and services. Tabula Rosa has a new blog and Twitter site which offers great IT product information for virtually anyone.
==============================================

Netiquette IQ Blog Of 6/17/2015 - Cyber Bullying - The Meaning Of Ad Hominem



================================================
From nobullying.com 



The Meaning behind Ad Hominem….
People can argue about everything. They debate politics and try to find solutions. They talk about TV shows they love or music they hate. Discussion can be fun and an opportunity to learn. Healthy debate challenges our assumptions. A good argument will change your mind. Even if you don’t change your mind, explaining why you feel the way you do is a good mental exercise.
Good arguments can be hard to come by. They can be really hard to find on the internet. Many people rely on personal attacks as a way to win an argument. It’s not an argument that persuades, though; it’s calling the opponent names and thinking that counts as debate. The personal attack instead of a real argument is how we define ad hominem. It doesn’t actually win the argument, just makes it based on who can sling the most mud or make the most accusations.
Ad hominem attacks
 In Latin, ad hominem means against man. An ad hominem argument is more like trying to persuade someone by calling your opponent or someone your opponent is referring to a jerk with an ugly face. Someone is arguing by being against the man, or the person making the counter argument. Opinions and ideas should stand on their own, no matter who makes them.
Ad hominem is a term a lot of us might have first heard hanging out with the debate club. Maybe it’s something you first studied in philosophy class. In philosophy classes it might be referred to as an argumentum ad hominem fallacy.
Lawyers need to learn all the modes of debate to be effective so they also study things like ad hominem attacks. Many examples of ad hominem attacks can be drawn from the courtroom. When a lawyer says a witness to a mugging can’t be trusted because they once lied to get out of a parking ticket, it’s an ad hominem attack. Lawyers use it because it works. We don’t always decide things through logic.
Personal Attacks Not Logical Arguments
Wherever we first heard the term, we’re all familiar with what it is since we were young. We’ve all had immature fights where we attacked the other person for saying something we felt was wrong. We didn’t have a good way to argue it was wrong so instead we called the other person names. Maybe we implied the other person couldn’t possibly know what they said they knew. We made a bad argument.
Remember when you were very young and a teacher said it was important to wash your hands but you just didn’t want to? Did you argue that it was a waste of time or did you just call the teacher a name and say that’s why you wouldn’t do it? We grow up and our way of arguing should. Ad hominem attacks are some of our first ideas of what an argument or debate is.
Still, it can be convincing. It’s nice to think that bad people can’t make good arguments or have good ideas. So only good people who never do anything wrong should be listened to or respected. It’s an also easy to make an ad hominem attack. People can’t possibly believe a word that jerk says! He’s a jerk! Relying on calling someone a jerk is the basic ad hominem definition.
Why Personal Attacks Work
Some ad hominem attacks are easy to see through. It’s an obvious case of calling someone a jerk and that’s why they’re wrong. Sometimes, it’s harder to see through the attack. After all, lying to get out of a ticket is a lie and maybe someone would lie once and then lie again about what they saw.
Ad hominem attacks come in three flavors. Personal ad hominem attacks are calling someone a jerk and a liar. Circumstantial ad hominem attacks are saying because a person has an interest in something being true, they can’t argue it’s true. A circumstantial ad hominem example is saying a chaplain has to say they believe in God or they wouldn’t have a job. Therefore a chaplain can’t be believed when they speak about God. Another kind of ad hominem attack is saying someone has a hidden agenda and therefore can’t be trusted when they argue for or against something.
These ad hominem examples might not sound so wrong. Some people do have hidden agendas. Some people do lie. Ad hominems aren’t about pointing out hypocrisy or lies. Ad hominem is ignoring or denying arguments because of the person making them. We have trouble seeing which is ad hominem and which is exposing hypocrisy or a bad actor. Our own personal biases can make us want to believe an ad hominem attack when we disagree with the person being attacked. Some people find conspiracies and hidden agendas comforting to believe in because a conspiracy or people targeting them makes more sense in a way than random bad luck or their own failures. Circumstantial ad hominem and what’s called poisoning the well can play to our prejudices. They can confirm our unconscious racism or sexism.
Examples of Ad Hominem Attacks
A great place to find ad hominems is on the internet. Someone will post that they really love a particular TV show despite what critics say about it. They’d love to get comments from other people who love the show or even people who just want to talk about the show. One person replies writing that they’ve read other posts from this person, and the first person is basically a loser who does nothing but watch TV and has no taste. It’s an ad hominem because they’re saying nothing about the TV show; they’re attacking the TV fan. Is it just being mean or do they not like the show? The reader can’t tell because there’s no argument there.
The next person who replies to the post comments that the TV show fan has the same job as the lead character of the show, so of course they love it. Another ad hominem because it’s not about the TV show, it’s about the person and the circumstances of the person who liked it. Does that mean only people who don’t have the same job as the lead character get to have an opinion about the TV show?
The third reply is from someone who writes that the fan is clearly a plant from the TV show’s marketing people. No one really like the TV show, so this person has to be personally biased to enjoy it. You guessed it; it’s an ad hominem attack.
===============================================
**Important note** - contact our company for very powerful solutions for IP management (IPv4 and IPv6, security, firewall and APT solutions:

www.tabularosa.net

In addition to this blog, Netiquette IQ has a website with great assets which are being added to on a regular basis. I have authored the premiere book on Netiquette, “Netiquette IQ - A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email". My new book, “You’re Hired! Super Charge Your Email Skills in 60 Minutes. . . And Get That Job!” will be published soon follow by a trilogy of books on Netiquette for young people. You can view my profile, reviews of the book and content excerpts at:

 www.amazon.com/author/paulbabicki

 If you would like to listen to experts in all aspects of Netiquette and communication, try my radio show on BlogtalkRadio  Additionally, I provide content for an online newsletter via paper.li. I have also established Netiquette discussion groups with Linkedin and Yahoo.  I am also a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and Minding Manners among others. Further, I regularly consult for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts and have been a contributor to numerous blogs and publications. 

Lastly, I am the founder and president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a company that provides “best of breed” products for network, security and system management and services. Tabula Rosa has a new blog and Twitter site which offers great IT product information for virtually anyone.
==============================================