Oct 30th, 2007
Mobile etiquette: This post sent from my phone
Email sent from a desk does not equal email sent from a mobile device.
When you send an SMS text or chat message people understand the casual, quick nature of the medium, and therefore expect a level of casualness when it comes to spelling full words (u versus you, ppl versus people) and forming complete thoughts and sentences. Just as spoken language is conversational, chat and SMS afford a certain level of laxness.
Email has evolved. There was a time when typing in all lowercase (hopefully you never typed in all caps) was normal enough for email. But since it has become the mainstay of corporate communication, it has dressed up accordingly. Although emoticons occasionally find their way into corporate emails, cute misspellings and abbreviations don’t.
New etiquette is needfully emerging. How do recipients know you’re sending an email from a device versus your desktop? When I’m writing a note via email from a mobile device, to a work colleague, must I type in complete thoughts and sentences? Must I capitalize and punctuate?
When I first saw Apple’s “Sent from my iPhone” default signature I thought it just let me show off my cool quotient with an iPhone reference. What they really did was create a disclaimer: forgive the typos and the informality.
(I thought about actually posting this from my phone, but blogging requires a certain level of formality that I wasn’t prepared to take on with a mobile device. That would be more appropriate for my microblog.)
5 Responses to “Mobile etiquette: This post sent from my phone”
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I deleted my iPhone default signature for the same exact reason to mentioned here, but after reading this post I wonder if I should reinstate it so I can get away with my bad spelling. Though maybe I’ll change ‘iPhone’ to ‘handset’ or ‘mobile device’ or ‘cellphone’ or, hmmm I dunno any suggestions?
First thing I did was change that to “// sent via mobile”. I’ve found that having a mobile signature does allow me to keep communication short and sweet, while still showing responsiveness.
I take the dealership frames off my license plates too.
A BlackBerry user I work with uses an auto signature; something along the lines of: “Sent from my handheld. Please excuse typos and brevity.”
I’ve started simply rereading my BlackBerry messages a few times before sending (the important ones, anyway); I *always* catch typos… damn those tiny, tiny keys.
[...] Mobile etiquette: This post sent from my phone [...]
Yes, I changed mine to something more generic too. I think Windows Mobile has a similar preset signature, but it doesn’t pat itself on the back.