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1. ProtocoolAttitude AdjustmentOur friend Miles loves his job in the entertainment industry, but he dreads opening his e-mail. He never knows what will jump out of his in-box and grab him by the throat. Messages between colleagues have become curt, rude, aggressive. Sentences are often mere commands, shortened to quick barks. There's a sense that to be nice in e-mail is to show weakness. It's gotten so bad that Miles is seeing a cognitive therapist to help him deal with the stress.Welcome to the dark side. Sure, the digital revolution is awesome, the niftiest thing to come along since the wheel. Computers have made writing routine for people who almost never wrote before. Online bulletin boards, chat rooms, instant messages, Web pages, newsgroups, and the like have brought new meaning to the word "community." And e-mail has single-handedly revived the epistolary tradition, the venerable practice of writing letters.But not everybody's cheering. Miles (he asked us not to use his real name) isn't the only one who finds this new world hard to take. Others grumble about spam assaults, wacko chain letters, waves of mass-forwarded jokes, in-your-face instant messages, Web sites to nowhere, boorish behavior in chat rooms, complicated downloads that tie up their computers, and rampant misinformation. Some people are so bummed by e-mail that they won't have anything to do with it. So there!It's not hard to see what's happening. Like kids on their first visit to Toys "R" Us, we're experimenting with these new ways to communicate, trying to fit a square peg into a round hole or make a dump truck fly or see through the wrong end of a telescope. If we want to play nicely with others, boys and girls, we'll have to learn how to use our new toys.The Mouse That RoaredA corporate president we know showed us an e-mail that a software developer had sent to her and a dozen other people in her company. The message announced plans for a training session and added: "Please let me know if you would be interested in attending or if you would like an underling to attend."Ouch! Let's hope the training session wasn't about sensitivity in the workplace.It's strange how online writing can bring out the tactless oaf in even the nicest person. The dunderhead who sent that e-mail would never have used the word "underling" in a memo to be tacked up on the office bulletin board. Yet there it was, dropped as casually as you please into a mailing to a long list of people. Why not use the PA system?The next time you e-mail, show a little tact. For starters, adjust your attitude before you begin writing. Imagine how your message will look to the reader, and write the kind of e-mail you'd like to get if the tables were turned. When you've finished, reread the message before letting it go. Look for dissonant notes (like "underling"). As Jane, our editor, often says, "Leave no tone unturned." And never, never, never hit Send in anger-hit Send Later and store the radioactive mat Excerpted from You Send Me: Getting It Right When You Write Online by Patricia T. O'Conner, Stewart Kellerman All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.