Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home
by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe

The world’s first e-mail message was sent in 1971 by Ray Tomlinson.

171 billion e-mails are sent each day, meaning almost 2 million e-mails are sent every second!

The New York Times reports that 62% of all e-mail is spam and about 10% contains viruses.

Unsolicited e-mail earned the name “spam” because it resembled a Monty Python skit where a chorus of Vikings drowned out other sounds by singing “spam, spam, spam.”

The time spent deleting spam costs United States businesses $21.6 billion annually.

The Productivity Institute of Stratford, Connecticut, reports that the average person today receives around 150 communications each day via e-mail, phone, hard mail, memos, circulars, faxes, etc.

Communication consists of 55% facial expression and body language.

Communication consists of 38% voice inflection.

Communication consists of 7% words.

Therefore, when communicating by e-mail, you lose 93% of your effectiveness.

Add those stats to the fact that the majority of us learned how to e-mail through osmosis at home or on the job, and it becomes quite evident why e-mail can cause major problems, misunderstandings, and hard feelings on a regular basis. This book will most likely be your first introduction to the do’s and don’ts of proper e-mail etiquette.

The name of this book is actually an acronym derived from an easy, four-question checklist designed to help you determine whether you should hit the Send key after composing your e-mail.

S stands for Simple.
E stands for Effective.
N stands for Necessary.
D stands for Done.

In the spirit of revealing how little we actually know about the fine art of proper e-mailing, take a look at some of what you’ll learn within a mere 228 pages:

• A Brief History of E-mail
• The Anatomy of an E-mail
• The Six Essential Types of E-mail
• How to Write (the Perfect) E-mail
• The Emotional E-mail
• The Eight Deadly Sins of E-mail
• The Seven Big Reasons to Love E-mail
• Eight Reasons You May Not Want to E-mail
• Six Reasons to Send a Letter Instead of an E-mail
• Three Reasons to Send a Fax Instead of an E-mail
• The Seven Reasons to Use the Telephone Instead of E-mail
• The Five Reasons to IM and Text Instead of E-mail
• Big Moments in E-mail History
• The Anatomy of an E-mail
• The Politics of Cc
• The ABC’s of Cc’s and Bcc’s
• The Eleven Most Common Types of Attachments
• The Six Essential Types of E-mail
• The E-mail That Can Land You in Jail

(This book review was originally published in 2007 as one of the Top 10 Books – Edition 16.)