Page 29 - Today’s Business Communication; A How-to Guide for the Modern Professional

18 TODAY’S BUSINESS COMMUNICATION

the million-dollar comma? National Public Radio ran a fascinating piece
on its All Things Considered program about the legal case between Rogers
Communications and Bell Aliant over Rogers’ use of Aliant’s telephone
poles. Rogers believed their contract was good for 5 years, and Aliant said
the placement of the second comma in the following clause allowed it to
terminate the contract before 5 years and save $2 million (Canadian):

This agreement shall be effective from the date it is made and shall
continue in force for a period of five (5) years from the date it is
made, and thereafter for successive five (5) year terms, unless and
until terminated by one year prior notice in writing by either party.

The court agreed with Aliant. So if your email carries the same weight as
other documents, don’t you want to make sure you aren’t responsible for
the next million-dollar comma?
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Avoid Overusing “cc” and “bcc”
People rightfully complain about being included unnecessarily on long
email chains. Effective communicators consider carefully the recipients of
their messages. Further, first-rate business communicators will often take
the time to remove chains of email to get down to the most important
piece of information before forwarding an email received from someone
else, or multiple people. One of us (Robert), automatically hits delete on
any messages that come from a particular colleague who lives in another
part of the world. All those deleted messages were chains the colleague
sent to scads of people with whom he wanted to share the joke or the
political statement, or whatever. Come on, you do it, don’t you? Most of
us do, so why wouldn’t we expect others to do what we are doing?

Text Messaging

Although email, face-to-face conversations, group meetings, and phone
conversations are preferred channels for workplace communication, there
is little doubt that text messaging is becoming increasingly important.
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In fact, the Pew Internet and American Life Project recently reported that