Emails can get you into trouble

I completely agree that emails need to be composed in a careful way knowing that the intention of the writer may not be received correctly by the reader.But, to me proper use of English grammar and spelling are more important and give whatever you are writing a more professional feel. I can't take anything seriously that is riddled with grammar misuses and spelling mistakes. Drives me bananas ;-)Common spelling issues that I can't understand how anyone who has attended college can produce:BeleiveAppropiateThere/their misuseIt's/its misuseLose/loose misuseAnd so many more I could write an article on it. When I get an email from someone in management with spelling and grammatical mistakes, I cringe.Sent from my iPhone using allnurses.com

If you don't want the world to know then don't write or say it in an email, text, voice message, social media, ect... Anything we say or write on computers, cells, tablets, etc... is stored for a very, very long time (even if you think you've deleted it, it's still there). Grammar and spelling is a must though there is the edit button on everything, there shouldn't be any errors. If I have a long email and I'm worried about the tone I use emoticons to get my point across. If you're worried about grammar, usually saying it out loud will catch mistakes.a/an...my pet peeve in writing.This also includes photos...remember Wiener?

Thank you for the advise. I wish you could have given some examples of how someone lost their job due to sending an unappropriate email. Just curious.

Great article. One thing to add: just because a message is deleted doesn't mean that it's gone from your facility forever. A copy of that deleted message is often maintained in the company's servers...and it can come back to haunt you.

I think a formal protocol and ettiquite for composing emails should start being taught as early as grade school. It's an undeniable part of culture now.

Totally agree Brandon!

Aren't we supposed to be writing e-mails the way we write letters? Call me old fashion and corny, but I'm thinking the basic etiquette should remain in an e-mail. Apparently the younger generation doesn't think this :0Try to talk about one subject per email to avoid confusion

Advice/advise (Advice is a noun, advise is a verb)Singular/plural mismatch; "they" as a singular ("You can tell your patient has heart failure if they are ..." FAIL)Inappropriate Capitals for Everything ("I saw the Physical Therapist at my Dentist's office." FAIL)Inappropriate possessives for plurals ("I bought four apple's." FAIL)They're/there/theirInappropriate use of quotation marks ("Do you know how I should contact the "board" to ask about my license?" FAIL)Bizarre punctuation...or none at all, in long run-on sentences that never come to the point. "My sister says that she likes mashed potatoes we have creamed spinach for Thanksgiving they're my favorite." Huh?"U" for "you"Oh, you shouldn't have gotten me started on that.... Yes, written communication is important no matter what its medium. (Oh, and that's the singular of media. A newspaper is not media, a film is not media, television is not media. Each is a medium.)

Lets add that once an email is sent, you lose control over it. It can be forwarded on and on and on. Who knows where it ends up?

Quote from ProfRN4Aren't we supposed to be writing e-mails the way we write letters? Call me old fashion and corny, but I'm thinking the basic etiquette should remain in an e-mail. Apparently the younger generation doesn't think this :0I really wish this weren't the case, but it really is true. I can't tell you how many e-mails I have written to colleagues (educated colleagues, at that), who only answer the first part of the e-mail. I try to include more than one subject in the e-mail (ei., "exam 2 and clinical make-ups), but still, only the first part is worthy of a reply. It's like people today don't have the attention span to read an entire e-mail.

From the title of the thread I assumed this was about Patraeus.

My pet peeves are the misuse (or non-use) of paragraph breaks and semicolons.Nobody likes a wall-o-text, and periods are usually a better choice than joined sentences that could then be their own paragraph...Oh, I also tend to give up on walls-o-text that use ellipses to string thoughts along without ever giving the eye a chance to break and digest the information.Ah, grammar.