Interpersonal communication etiquette was a lot simpler back in the day. You had letters and face-to-face conversations. Then came the telephone.
Fast forward to today. Letters and conversations are few and far between. Emails, texts and social media posts dominate. It’s a new world. It’s a fragmented world. Different people use different technologies. Older people use email. Younger people use text. Some people use specific texting apps like What’s App or Facebook Messenger. In many ways, it’s a Tower of Babel.
If you can go off the grid, I congratulate you. You have arrived. But most of us have to work, function and interact with society. There is no real alternative. Mastering all these new communication technologies today is equivalent to learning to read in the past. Technological illiteracy is rarely an option.
Over the years I have heard so many people, usually older, tell me, “It’s too late for me to learn to email (or text, or search the Internet or get a smartphone or do Facebook.)” One by one, these people eventually come around. Few of us can afford isolation.
There is a hierarchy of modern-day communications tools each with a separate etiquette. It’s important to understand how this works.
Email
This is the go-to communication medium for businesses, acquaintances and even strangers. The etiquette is pretty broad here. Hard to mess up too badly. The send/receive etiquette bar is low. Email blasts are accepted as part of the lay of the email land. It’s easy to ignore emails, filter spam, block annoying people and communicate with large groups.
For instance, if I am trying to put together a golf foursome, I will send out an email to a large group of potential golfers. Often I will include a note “just reply to the affirmative.” Getting 15 “noes” with lengthy explanations is a waste of time. If you’re not interested, it is perfectly polite to simply ignore the email.
Email is fine for business, social, commentary and just about anything. Some people are political email blasters. That’s fine, but be prepared for friends to ask to be removed from the list. And try to do some fact checking before passing on fake news, which is rampant in the email sphere.
Text messages
Texts are a whole different ball game from email. Texts should be much more intimate, personal and urgent than email. Hardly anybody sets up sound notifications for email. If they did, their phones would ding all day long. Thus, emails can be ignored until checked leisurely at will.
Not so for text messages. Many people will program their phone to ding if they get a new text. Plus charges can apply to text messages. Texts are for close friends and family to communicate quickly. It’s bad etiquette to text someone you don’t know well.
A big text message etiquette faux pas is sending group text messages. When this happens, everytime someone in the group responds to the text, everybody in the group gets the message, causing their phone to blow up. Very rude. There is a way to respond to the group text message sender alone, rather than the whole group, but few people use this feature. Group blasts should be confined to very small personal groups. Otherwise use email.
Voice mail
Back in the day, voice mail was a big deal. We all had voice recorders. But text and email has made this more or less obsolete. Do not call someone on your smartphone and leave a message that you called. They know you called. It’s on their missed call list. It take time to listen to a redundant voice mail and delete it.
The only reason to leave a voicemail is if the subject matter is complex enough that a text message would be difficult. Another reason would be if the subject matter is delicate and the tone in your voice would be significant. With the ability to dictate long text messages, voice mails should be pretty infrequent.
Live calls
Live calls are time wasters and should be reserved for entertainment and complex, dynamic interchanges such as picking a place to go to dinner. Phone calls are a fall back when email, text and even voicemail have failed to get the job done. For instance, if the system breaks down and your reservation is completely screwed up, a phone call may be in order.
Bear in mind, I am referring to cell phone calls. Home phones are for your security system and telemarketers. Calling someone on their home phone just means you barely know them and don’t have their cell number. Office phones are a bit of a gray area. Still used, but much less personal and urgent than the smartphone.
Social media
Social media is, well, social. It’s your external face to the world. As such, you should stay within some basic conventions of decency and socially accepted practices. Diatribes should be limited to screwed up airplane reservations, bureaucratic stupidity and other universally despised things. Save your political rants for political blogs.
Posting a picture of your beautiful family vacation seems to be de rigueur but just realize that some will regard this as a form of vanity. Same thing with the miraculous accomplishments of your children. Some judgement is required here.
Photos of your meal, cat, dog, new pair of shoes, and other moment-to-moment chronicling of your life is, I suppose, OK, as long as the poster realizes that sharing such intimate and boring details will be viewed by many as a form of narcissism. Marriages, deaths in the family, prayer requests, engagements and other basic social information is perfectly acceptable, as well as occasional updates on the family. Just keep it within reason.
Neighborhood blogs and such are great for lost and loose pets, suspicious cars, burglaries, low water pressure, power outages and the like. Do not post non-neighborhood subject matter. Be extremely careful to be diplomatic. Words are easily misconstrued. Remember, these are your neighbors.
Handwritten letters
Oh boy. Is this your last will and testimony? Explaining to your spouse why you are leaving? Telling an adult child why you will no longer send him or her all your money? This is reserved for some seriously significant words. If it’s life changing, do not email or text or Facebook. Write a handwritten letter on nice personalized stationery.
In my perfect world, I would have time to write long beautiful letters to all my beloved friends and family. Maybe one day.
Face-to-face
Ever been to a restaurant and seen everybody at the table staring at their smartphones instead of talking to one another? Problem with face to face is that you are limited to communicating with the person in front of you. If you don’t want to talk face to face with a person, then stay home. Otherwise, it is rude to be on your smartphone when having a conversation with another human being, unless to turn it off. n
Wyatt Emmerich is president of Emmerich Newspapers and publisher of The Northside Sun in Jackson. He owns about 25 newspapers, including the C-P. He may be reached at wyatt@northsidesun.com.
