Module 2a — Office
Correspondence
and Records
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Avoiding email ‘flames’
Emailing has great potential for causing trouble. As indicated earlier, the ease of replying without due thought and in the heat of anger is very seductive. In a face-to-face context, body language and immediate feedback from the receiver of the message allow you to moderate an overly hasty response on the spot. With emailing, the message is in print and hence more prone to misinterpretation and to causing offence.
Tone is always a difficult area in organizations like the ILO with a multi-cultural workforce often working in a language which is not their mother tongue. For example, what may be intended as an inoffensive and straightforward message from an English-as-a-second-language speaker can come across as quite offensive to a reader whose mother tongue is English.
Vocabulary with strong pejorative connotations should be avoided in emails. They have the potential to inflict long-term and unnecessary damage to both sender and receiver.