How to write with a megaphone Friday September 4, 2009
Did you hear how shouty writing got someone (unfairly) fired? Emails written in very loud, very red capital letters led to the dismissal of a woman in New Zealand. It seems her colleagues and her boss couldn’t take being barked at in writing any more. An extreme reaction? Of course. It was rightly found to be (deeply) unfair dismissal. But this is also an indicator of the effect of writing with INDISCRIMINATE EMPHASIS. The etiquette of writing emails is of course a subtle and complex thing. But in any writing or copy, putting your message in random capitals implies your audience needs the message spelling out – and that’s not likely to win many people over. It’s copy minus the megaphone that gets attention. Now that is something to shout about.
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