If you don’t have time to make sure your email is clear – pick up the phone. Brief emails can often cause more trouble than they are worth. Sometimes our voice fills in far more information than we could quickly type.
We can more easily understand the meaning of “no” if we hear it. It could have multiple meanings — important details of the intention coming through prosodic choices – the musicality of the voice – to convey meaning. “No” could mean, “stop” or “that happened? you must be kidding” or “unbelievable” or “really?” or “I don’t want any” or any number of other messages. Prosody used well is magic for communication.
If you write a short email, it may be that the tone you hear as you write it is upbeat and affirmative. But that same brief email can be misread or “misheard” on the other end as curt or short. And then, the human problem sets in. We create story. We fill in incomplete info. We are sure they meant such and such and then the whole back story starts to fill in.
Pick up the phone – the less time you have, the easier the phone will make it.
