Hello and Goodbye

I'm a big believer in the importance of greetings.

Letters, emails, post-it notes to my roommates . . . I think there is inherent value in a salutation, be it formal or informal.

Yesterday, I received an email with no greeting or closing - just three short sentences, two of which had abbreviations in them (ASAP and FYI).

I thought to myself, how rude of this person to send me an email without so much as a "Hello" and "Goodbye"?  I don't expect anything flowery, but really - how much extra effort does it take someone to type 12 extra letters?

I mentioned these thoughts to my roommate Katie, who is a senior Political Science major, hopes to become a lawyer, and works several internship positions in attorney offices.  We got into an in-depth conversation about email formalities, and I was astounded to hear that she never uses greetings or closings in her emails.  In fact, her exact words were, "Writing that stuff is a waste of time, and whenever I get an email with extra fluff in it, it makes me think the person is unnecessarily detailed and taking up too much time."

Wow.  I guess the etiquette of email is expressed differently to Political Science majors than it is to Communications Studies majors.  How interesting is that?  The fact that email has taken us to a point where it isn't even rude to write three lines without a greeting or closing.  I think back to centuries ago when a man's signature and closing showed how powerful he was, and thousands of years ago when greetings listed all the positions held and attributes and points of interest about their intended readers.  How much has Internet communication transformed what was once polite and obligatory to something that some people apparently read as "fluff"?

I would love to have a discussion to hear what my Digital Communication class thinks about this - most of the class are Communication Studies majors, as I am, so I wonder if we will have similar or differing perspectives.  Why have informal, salutation-less emails become the norm?  Isn't that destroying some of the most beautiful aspects of communication?

Since I still believe in greetings and closings (even in the blogosphere), I'll leave you with this: