You may already have read my latest article published in Internet Day last week - it discusses some of the ways you can be kind to your readers by getting straight to the point in e-mail messages. At this time of the year, when time (and tempers) are stretched to the limit, you owe it to your friends and business associates to do just this. If you're a business person on the web, a great deal of your time is spent sending e-notes to potential customers. This is the preferred method of communication these days, because it's fast, efficient and inexpensive.

However, it's precisely these factors that often make e-mail the poor relation in terms of presentation and content. Just because it's cheap to send, doesn't mean it should be cheap in quality.

Time is money - as time shrinks relative to the number of tasks we have to complete in any given day, it becomes more and more precious. So you owe it to yourself and your customers to try to save time wherever possible.

An e-note should get to the point immediately - the way to do this, is to plan what you intend to write. Here is a formula for writing an effective e-note or letter to a potential customer or client.

You should limit yourself to four (count 'em - 1, 2, 3, 4) paragraphs:

1. Get straight to the point of your e-note. Introduce the 'pain' that your customers are feeling. Paint a picture of how they're feeling so they can visualise themselves in a particular situation. Use vivid, active words.
2. Show exactly how you can ease their pain - again, use vivid, active words.
3. Provide more details about how you can solve their problems - perhaps explain how others have benefited from using your product or service or what is special and different about your product.
4. Tell your customers exactly what you want them to do - it might be to order, to send for a free sample, to download a trial program, to subscribe to an ezine or to fill out a survey.

 What's 'out'

There are a number of things you should avoid putting in your e-notes - if only because they've become cliches and have lost their meaning (these pointers apply to both business and personal e-mail):

• Standardised greetings - "Dear Mr Smithers". Try something a little different: "Good Morning / Good Afternoon ..."
• Passive voice - this is the formal, distant it's-nothing-to-do-with-me approach e.g. "It has come to our attention that sales of gizmos have exceeded all expectations..." use the active voice - it's much more immediate and personal e.g. "Gizmo sales have gone through the roof!" or "I've noticed that gizmo sales have increased ..."
• Abstract nouns - these are nouns that express concepts e.g. "Current reactions to the prospect of regulation of the sale of domain names range from cynicism to hostility..." These expressions are stilted and cold because they lack active verbs. Far better to inject some life into your sentence, "Users are outraged at moves to regulate the sale of domain names."
• Long-winded expressions - not " ...it is uncertain what has perpetuated the notion that ..." but "we don't know why ..."
• Unnecessary words - the English language is very economical, it has 'built-in' meanings in many words e.g. 'return' means 'to go back' so you don't need to write 'return back'; it's not necessary to describe someone as a 'personal friend' - what other kind are there? Understand the precise meanings of words you use and you can save your readers precious time.
• Qualifiers - these are adverbs that won't be needed if you choose the right verbs! You don't need to tell us that the "music blared loudly" - "blared" means 'loud'; no need for "the car sped quickly away" - 'speeding' has to be quick. The most unnecessary qualifiers are like these: "very, quite, rather, little bit, pretty much" and so on. You're either successful or you're not - don't waste time writing that your company is "quite successful" - that casts doubt in the reader's mind. It's as pointless as writing "rather dead" or "very dead" or "pretty dead" - you're either with us or you're not!

Put these simple steps into practice and write e-notes that are easy and fast to read.

The feminine gender for these words:

Cob (boy swan) - PEN

Coster (man who sells from a stall in the street) - DONAH

Hold (boy ferret) - JILL

Proprietor - PROPRIETRIX

Hound - BRACH

Tutor - GOVERNESS

Friar - NUN

Steer - HEIFER

Sloven - SLUT

Last week's jumbled words:

STNOIIAPDP - disappoint

YRUUXL - luxury

ATREYIV - variety

VONSURE - nervous

MENLOS - solemn

Makes it easier when there are the right number of letters, doesn't it?

Pair each word with its appropriate ANTONYM (opposite) from the list:

Ungracious, extempore, god-like, unhurried, homogeneous, changeable, paltry, uneducated

Benign -

Diabolical -

Premeditated -

Immutable -

Hectic -

Formidable -

Heterogeneous -

Erudite -

This next little offering is a tad irreverent - but we're all friends here - you know I mean no harm (and it'll give you a giggle). This was sent to me last year by my daughter - we have no idea who the creative genius responsible for it is - only that it's someone who has wa-a-a-ay too much time to spare. (If you happen to know the author, please let me know, so I can give credit where credit is due!)

It's funny how intimate an environment the web really is - I've received a couple of different versions of this recently. But this one sent in by Leo is my favourite:

Are you qualified to be a professional?

The following quiz consists of four questions that tell you whether or
not you are qualified to be a professional. Scroll down for the answers.
The questions are not that difficult. You just need to think like a
professional.

1. How do you put a giraffe into a refrigerator?







The correct answer is: Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe and
close the door.

This question tests whether or not you are doing simple things in a
complicated way.


2. How do you put an elephant into a refrigerator ?






Incorrect answer: Open the refrigerator, put in the elephant and shut
the refrigerator.

Correct answer: Open the refrigerator, take out of the giraffe, put in
the elephant and close the door. This question tests your foresight.


3. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend
except one. Which animal does not attend?






Correct answer: The elephant. The elephant is in the refrigerator!

This tests if you are capable of comprehensive thinking.

OK, if you did not answer the last three questions correctly, this one
may be your last chance to test your qualifications to be a
professional.


4. There is a river filled with crocodiles. How do you cross it?






Correct Answer: Simply swim through it. All the crocodiles are attending
the animal meeting!

This question tests your reasoning ability.


If you answered four out of four questions correctly, you are a true
professional. Wealth and success await you.

If you answered three out of four, you have some catching up to do but
there's hope for you.

If you answered two out of four, consider a career as a hamburger
flipper in a fast food joint.

If you answered one out of four, try selling some of your organs. It's
the only way you will ever make any money.

If you answered none correctly, consider a career that does not require
any higher mental functions at all, such as politics.

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second. This is to say, that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks.

This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second - 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour...

The payload of the sleigh adds an interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself.

On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them. Santa would need 360,000 reindeer. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh - another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

600,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates an enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.

The entire reindeer team would vaporise within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in 001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,014 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he doesn't now.

And a Latin phrase for when you're overcome by feelings of goodwill:

Minime senuisti! (You haven't aged a bit!)

Calories don't count if you dress athletically.

Anything eaten while wearing tennis shorts, jogging pants or a ski jacket is immediately metabolised.

Ice cream eaten on the beach has no calories if your swimsuit is one piece.

(All dieting tips from "Calories Don't Count" by Barbara Gibbons)

Regards,

Jennifer

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