personal email pet peeve
first line “My name is x and…”
Yes I know, your name is in the “from:” line and probably at the bottom as well. Why don’t you just say “My name is x and I’m 12 years old” so you sound completely like a child.
[This is mainly from emails I get in my position at the radio station.]
June 8th, 2006 at 5:08 am
OK I’m gonna step up and speak for those of us who do this to you!
I *always* introduce myself at the beginning of letters to strangers, as if writing a business letter. Why? For one, I don’t actually remember what my email header says. In college it read for a period of about a year, ‘Drops of liquid uncertainty,’ and I never bothered to change it for job applications and the like. And what if the email gets forwarded and the header buried? What if the reader is a paper-office type and skips right to the subject and text? (Then they’re a douchetard but whatever.)
We don’t do it to piss you off, sir. We do it to keep a proud communicative tradition alive, and to provide unnecessary, superfluous redundancy in case the person we’re sending the email to is a total tardswamp.
Your Tahoe Century story was really inspiring, by the way. Guilt-inducing, of course, but inspiring.
June 8th, 2006 at 10:50 am
this is tangential, but Wally’s comment made me think of it…
whenever I write a letter that involves a claim number or case number or somesuch, I write said number on each page about 5 times, all in different places.
June 8th, 2006 at 1:05 pm
Email is strange because the form of it is like that of a memo, though the tone and other constructions (signing at the bottom) is like that of a letter. Either way, one’s name appears in other places in the email, so writing it in the first like is unnecessary. If you’re really worried about it, put your full name after your closing salutation.
Speaking of which, I’m taking suggetions for a new closing salutation. This
“Cheers,
Adrian ” business is getting old.