DEAR MS. FAKE,
I received your email detailing your ideas about how email is a passive aggressive mode of communication. If I’m going to be honest, I must say I disagree.
Conducting business with professors, fellow students, roommates, and friends is best done over email for a variety of reasons that I have listed below for your personal reference.
Emotions cannot run rampant in an email. It is far easier to be clear and to the point via email than it is to rationally express yourself in person, where body language, tone of voice, and ability to react immediately instead of brooding over the careful wording of your rebuttal are all factors in communication. No one has ever misunderstood someone’s tone over email, your honest mistake in our previous correspondence excepted. (No offence intended xo)
Time and place are irrelevant when communicating solely over email. Have class, work, or other commitments peskily getting in the way of carrying out your argument to the bitter end? Email eradicates those issues because it is accessible almost everywhere you are. Using email you can be at the beck and call of your opponent 24/7. Wouldn’t that have been just lovely yesterday instead of making a scene at the coffee shop by quietly discussing your inexplicable issues with me there?
Words can be chosen wisely over email. When arguing in person it is extremely difficult to find the proper words, as your bouts of silence during the aforementioned coffee shop incident indicate. When composing an email an individual has a variety of linguistic tools available to them, diminishing the need for awkward and lengthy silences and improving communication by ensuring the correct word is always chosen. Why say upset when you mean offended and irate? I’ll never understand why you insist upon the former when discussing your uncontrollable emotions.
Reference material exists when communication is recorded in emails. How am I to properly pick apart the errors in your logic if I do not have them recorded? I am told keeping notes during conversations is looked down upon, so how else can all issues be exhaustively held over your head unless via email?
I’m sure this well-written list will be of much use to you in future arguments, which I’m sure you will hold with me and others in your life. If you are still unconvinced email is a superior form of communication when dealing with any and all conflict, I would be happy to discuss the issue with your further, perhaps via Post-It or notes placed under your windshield wiper.
OK, thanks, bye.
—Jaclyn Lytle
