Search - Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home

I thought I was decent at email, but this taught me I could be better: more informative subject lines, better "mirroring," avoiding unnecessary interruption. I might read this once a year to stay sharp.

The only downside of this book: You will want to tie down certain coworkers or bosses and force them to read it. You know, the ones who forward long-discredited urban legends, or WHO TYPE IN ALL CAPS, or who hit reply to all when they should be hitting reply.

Mad about your boss's close relationship with a co-worker and want to send a nasty email to him to tell him to play fair? Best buddy has begun dating an ex of yours and you want to decorate his inbox with some choice words? Save that little 'nasty-gram' as a draft and start reading this book.

Co-writers David Shipley and Will Schwalbe have a lot of experience in the writing field (New York Times opinions and editorial editor & editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books, respectively), and they do well in recapping some of their emailing adventures in Send, usually using them as examples of what not to do in electronic communication. Anyone fuzzy of the rules of 'netiquette' (internet etiquette) will find this book to be of good use; not only does it cover the best case scenarios in the world of emailing (yep, you can get a good job with it), it elaborates on the worst, too (care for a lawsuit?).

Shipley and Schwalbe do well in explaining the proper and suitable ways of asking a favor, apologizing, responding and thanking over email, and pinpoint situations in which email probably isn't the best medium of communication to use. (Firing someone? Buck up and do it face-to-face.) And they provide quite suiting and often hilarious examples of etiquette and the lack thereof (Jenny's response to her boss's ketchup-ed pants is a hoot).

Need a little refresher course on what's right to say over the information superhighway and what's not? 'Send' this book in your direction. (Okay, that pun was cheesy, but it was all I could think of.)