You Send Me: Getting It Right When You Write Online (Hardcover)

by Patricia T. O'Conner (Author), Stewart Kellerman (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
Which came first, abominable writing or the computers on which that writing is wrought? Either way, say Patricia T. O'Conner and Stewart Kellerman in You Send Me, "much of what passes for writing in cyberspace is dreadful." Sending e-mail, joining chat rooms, and putting up Web sites is so easy that you might think the writing doesn't matter. Guess again. "When you write well, you connect," say the authors. "When you write badly, you don't." Some of You Send Me--lessons on grammar, punctuation, spelling, and confusing words--applies to all writing; the rest is tailored to online writing, particularly e-mailing. There's advice on writing subject lines, getting to the point, and getting the facts right. The authors recommend politeness and discretion, the use of the Shift key, and the inclusion of greetings and closings. Ask permission before sending attachments, they advise, "don't put anything in an office e-mail that you wouldn't want the whole office to see," "go easy on the Forward button," and "never hit Send in anger." And remember: "The less time you spend thinking about your message," they say, "the more time someone else has to spend reading it." --Jane Steinberg

From Library Journal
In spite of some clever chapter titles, this thin style guide offers little more than commonsense advice about when and how to send e-mails. Whether e-mailing belongs to a new generation of letter writers or to the youngest of conversationalists, we should already know to be electronically polite and cautious as well as to be ever conscious of our present and future audiences, both known and unknown. While sections on avoiding cliches and platitudes are useful reminders of how to become a better writer, why not tackle other stylistic flaws like the overuse of the passive voice, the nominalization of verbs, and the occasional shift from third-person to first-person-plural exposition? While sections on misused and misspelled words are useful, the lists provided by O'Conner (Words Fail Me) and her husband, journalist Kellerman, are limited and sometimes idiosyncratic. Many writers will find that as a usage manual this well-intentioned book is incomplete and as an exploration of the potential for effective communications through e-mail it just begins to "scratch the surface" (a phrase that should be added to the section titled "Trite Stuff"). Herbert E. Shapiro, SUNY/Empire State Coll., Rochester
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt; 1 edition (August 22, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151005931
• ISBN-13: 978-0151005932
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,118,044 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Useful Edition and Addition on Language, August 12, 2002

By	"mrsfaganselves" (huntington, ny United States) - See all my reviews

If you want your grammar and writing lessons sane, sober, serious, skip this book because the jokes, plays on words and plain old fun will drive you crazy.

But if you need light, useful advice about writing in cyberspace, or quick reminders about using numbers correctly, office etiquette, or brush-ups on grammar and writing, and have a laugh in the process, this book is for you. I highly recommend it.

O'Conner's books (Woe Is I, Words Fail Me, and now, You Send Me) remind me of an editor I work with who is a pun a minute. She can't stop herself and every conversation with her takes such twists and turns that the less articulate are left several sentences behind. If I didn't know that editor, I'd think that O'Conner and Kellerman had to have spent hours creating her more painful plays on words for some of their chapter and section titles:
Grammar a la Modem
Lurk Before You Leap
Go Configure
Clone Rangers
Myth Information
A Click and a Promise
Help for the Whomless

And on and on and on. I suspect it just spills out of them, fed by their obvious exuberance for their work.

But all of these little plays are wrapped around very helpful bits of logical suggestions and advice delivered in a conversational style. While ostensibly meant to deal with the horrific onslaught of wretched writing that shows up in
our e-mail, much of the book's advice can be applied to other writing. The team also reminds us of the need for accuracy in numbers and other facts, pointing out the difficulties so many people have with noticing what should be obvious exaggerations or faulty understanding of numbers.

O'Conner and her husband-coauthor divide this book into three sections:

The Virtual Mensch, which examines protocol issues--when to use e-mail, the need for subject lines, choice of e-mail names, keeping the reader in mind and more.

Alpha Mail, which focuses more closely on better writing (with such advice as divide long sentences into shorter ones, break the message into paragraphs); eliminating cliches, which includes a list of cliches followed by an authors' comment, e.g., acid test (Give it an F), diamond in the rough (cubic zirconium),
draw a blank (so fill it in), easier said than done (Then say it); the need for the writer to re-read an e-mail before sending it, and other topics.
Words of Passage, which takes the authors right back to their real issue,
language. Among other topics, they take us through easy lessons on it/its/it's/
and who/whom, subject-verb agreement and punctuation.

This book is a handy addition to the bookshelf of any editor or writer interested in how the language is or should be used.

3.0 out of 5 stars A helpful, easy read, but already dated, April 19, 2009

By	Angela M. (North Carolina, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: You Send Me: Getting It Right When You Write Online (Paperback)

Judging by the incoherent emails currently cluttering my email inbox, few of us know how to write online. Patricia T. O'Connor and Stewart Kellerman, best selling authors and former New York Times editors, aim to teach the basics of online writing, especially email, in You send me: Getting it right when you write online (2002). According to the authors, writing's popular again thanks to the increased use of the internet, but online writing is often dreadful because few people put the same thought and work into emails as in hard copy writing. Though somewhat different from hard copy writing, online writing should still conform to the standards of spelling, grammar, clarity, and readability. You Send Me tackles these issues and tries to teach the online writer to follow the same rules as non-wired writing.

Overall, the book provides sensible basic advice to writers. You Send Me claims that much of online writing suffers from inadvertent rudeness. Because email has the instantaneousness of a telephone call, many people forget that it also can have the permanence of a traditional letter. Some people write quickly without thinking the message through while others hit send without contemplating the tone or checking grammar. The authors are also adamant that you shouldn't send via email something that you wouldn't want your boss or the entire office to read. This advice is excellent given the proliferation of horror stories of misdirected and improperly forwarded emails, but I found the repetitiveness of the advice annoying.

The authors also aren't fans of the now ubiquitous emoticon, symbols used to help denote the emotion intended in the text, though I find them useful.

Of particular interest to me was the authors' advice to be judicious with the forward button. Although less use of forwarding would be helpful in some instances, there are cases where an email has bounced around so much or time has passed that I would not remember the question without the original message embedded. To address this problem, they suggest cutting and pasting only the relevant parts of the message to make it easier and faster for the reader.

The rest of the book provides advice on actually writing the text of the email. I found most of the guidelines and tips to be common sense for those who also write in the non-wired world, though we ignore the hard copy rules of writing frequently as well. Most writers already know that they should be concise and clear, avoid the passive voice, and re-read their document for clarity, grammar, and content. But some people may need a reminder of these rules of writing, given the abysmal emails flying in cyber space, such as an unthinking software developer who emailed "Please let me know if you would be interested in attending or if you would like an underling to attend" (p. 10) to dozens of people in the company, including the president. The third section is a brief summary of proper grammar and spelling, but other books provide a much better review of these topics.

Online writing is not the most fascinating topic, but the authors try to make it entertaining. Examples from popular culture or literature are used for most of their writing lessons. For example, a model of a coherent email is from Principal Skinner to Homer Simpson regarding Bart's shenanigans. I giggled throughout the first two-thirds of the book at the humor, but I was a little tired of 1980's pop culture references by the end of the book.

Seven years is a very long time in technology. You Send Me, published in 2002, already shows its outdatededness particularly when the authors refer to specific technologies or computer programs, such as spell checkers and Eudora. Spell checkers, while still not perfect, have improved from the examples cited in the book, though I wish their prediction of mood checkers built into email programs was accurate, as they would be helpful to most writers.

Although not particularly revolutionary in its content, the book serves as a solid reminder of the basic writing standards for email. Those who simply need to brush up their writing skills will find this book to be a fast, entertaining way to review basic writing rules. While not an appropriate book for those who need extensive writing assistance, I recommend You Send Me to those who need a humorous, basic guide to online writing.