5 Helpful Tips on How to Write Emails from Your Phone

5 Helpful Tips on How to Write Emails from Yur Phone5 Helpful Tips on How to Write Emails from Your Phone Today, 80 percent of Internet users own a smartphone. Its been predicted that, by this year, eight in ten emaille users will access their email accounts exclusively from their mobile devices . Were reading and writing mora emails on mobile than ever, so getting it right has never been more important. Getting communication right (in email or otherwise) is the driving force behind Grammarlys recent launch of a mobile keyboard for iOS and Android . But, although Grammarly will help you write mistake-free messages, its combining that polish with style and substance that will inevitably make your written communication effective.Weve all seen the ubiquitous Sent from my iPhone email signatures, or sigs along the lines of, Please excuse the brevity. This welches sent from my phone. These signatures, in part, are meant to excuse the sender from typos, autocorrect slips an d all those other times our thumbs betray us when we communicate via mobile devices.But just because you wield your thumbs instead of ten phalanges carefully placed on the home row doesnt mean everything you send from your phone has to look as though it welches transcribed by a typing chimpanzee. Theres hope This article will guide you towards writing clear, concise emails from your mobile device with panache.Nearly half of mobile readers spend three seconds or less reading an individual email. That is, of course, if you can get them to open your email at all . But lets assume you send emails that people want to read. Your challenge is to keep those emails brief or risk losing your reader to a very short digital attention span.That means its essential to optimize. Before you put your thumbs to work tapping out your email opus, take a few minutes to figure out the key point you want to get across in your message. Ask yourself If I could have my recipient take just one thing away fr om this email, what would it be? Use the answer to that question to front-load your email so that the most critical information comes first. If you dont, your recipient might miss the point of your email entirely, or breeze past it in their haste to move on to their next email to-do.Hi Jane, Yesterday, I was talking to Jim and he suggested you would have some good ideas about the upcoming Windy City Widgets marketing campaign. As you know, Windy City is an important client and this marketing campaign is pivotal to our success here at XYZ Advertising Associates. Im going to be downtown tomorrow afternoon, so I thought we might have lunch at JBs Sammiches to unpack what the client has told us about their ad needs and deadlines. JBs is close to your office, so I thought it would be convenient. Does 1230 p.m. work for you? All the best, RichardOy That email comes in at around a hundred words, and most of them arent necessary. Lets consider all the things this message conveys that it doe snt have to.For starters, its elend necessary to state that Jim suggested talking to Jane. Especially not up front. If Jims referral would be helpful in sealing the lunch appointment, go ahead and use it, but consider saving it for later in the email.Its also not necessary to reiterate that a client is important. Any time you start a sentence with As you know , youre probably telling the reader something they actually do already know. Driving home the point with an as you know statement can translate as passive-aggressive . Its as if youre saying, You should know this, but Ill reiterate just in case youre not good at your job. Make sure you dont come across as talking down to your colleagues.While its nice to consider a lunch location thats convenient for your colleague, its not necessary to point out how nice youre being. That extraneous information adds words, not impact.Lets front-load this email with important information and leave out any unnecessary detailsHi Jane, Are you available to meet me for lunch tomorrow at JBs Sammiches at 1230 p.m.? Id like to unpack some of the info Windy City Widgets gave us about their needs and deadlines for the upcoming campaign. Let me know if that would be convenient for you. All the best, RichardMuch better The message body comes in at a sleek forty-nine words and the all-important ask is straight up front rather than buried in a bunch of unimportant details. We can almost taste those sammiches nowCan you imagine how long it wouldve taken Tolstoy to compose War and Peace on a smartphone? If you want to really feel like a slacker, consider that one novelist wrote a significant portion of his novel on his smartphone while commuting on the subway . (And he did it nearly a decade ago.) When youre using two thumbs and staring at a small screen to craft your messages (let alone a novel), it pays to know how to keep your writing lean and mean.First, avoid common filler words and phrases . We already talked about As you know . Now, strike useless phrases like As a matter of fact , For the most part , each and every , and at this point in time from your lexicon. Your readers will appreciate your clear, concise language and youll convey your points much better without all the clutter.While youre at it, dump most adverbs . These words, which often end in -ly, are unnecessary unless removing them drastically changes the meaning of your sentence. So, dont bother thumb-typing words like basically, very, usually, extremely, probably and absolutely .Your signature may say that your email was sent from your phone, but that doesnt mean you should bypass the rules of polite email discourse .When you send email to multiple recipients at the same time, respect everyones privacy by masking their email addresses with BCC. Similarly, dont use Reply All and accidentally share an email with all members of an email chain when your reply was meant only to go to one person. And dont automatically assume that email is priva te and confidential. Avoid saying things in an email that you wouldnt say publicly. Otherwise, that email could come back to haunt you.Heres a tip Dont email when youre angry. If you must tap out a strongly-worded letter, hold off on hitting the Send button until youve had a chance to let it simmer. If you can wait, leave that letter on the back burner and come back to it twenty-four hours later. Were you more hostile than you meant to be in the heat of the moment? Could you have been more diplomatic and gotten your point across just as well? EditSome years back, my friend and I tried having a Messenger conversation by using our phones voice-to-text feature, and then sending whatever our smartphone interpreted. The result was hilariously bad. But voice-to-text has come a long way since then.Most mobile keyboards have voice-to-text functionality. On the Grammarly keyboard, simply long-press the comma key to activate your phones voice capabilities and dictate your message. Once dictat ed, you can quickly edit or correct any misheard words .Heres a tip Speak your punctuation so you dont have to add it after the fact. Dave, did you remember to file your report? would be spoken as, Dave comma did you remember to file your report question mark.You want to make a good impression . Proofreading is one way to ensure you will. We often write hasty notes when we use mobile technology, figuring that others will forgive us because, well, writing on a mobile device has its challenges. But proofreading before you hit send isnt that complicated. And, if youre using the Grammarly mobile keyboard, you can simply press the Grammarly button once youve finished writing to check your text and make sure your grammar, spelling and punctuation are pristine. No more excuses just because you sent it from your iPhoneThis article was originally published on Grammarly . It is reprinted with permission.

This is why some companies and people still prefer fax machines

This is why some companies and people still prefer telefaxgert machinesThis is why some companies and people still prefer fax machinesThe fax machine is a symbol of obsolete technology long superseded by computer networks but faxing is actually growing in popularity.Four years ago, I wrote a history of 160 years of faxing, saying my book covered the rise and fall of the fax machine. The end I predicted has not yet come Millions of people, businesses and community groups send millions of faxed pages every day, from standalone fax machines, multifunction printers and computer-based fax services. It turns out that in many cases, faxing is mora secure, easier to use and better suited to existing work habits than computer-based messaging.Businesses often use faxesFaxing remains alive and well, especially in Japan and Germany and in major sectors of the U.S. economy, such as health care and financial services. Countless emails flash back and forth, but millions of faxes travel the world daily too.A worldwide survey in 2017 found that of 200 large firms, defined as companies with mora than 500 employees, 82% had seen workers send the same number of, or even mora, faxes that year than in 2016. A March 2017 unscientific survey of 1,513 members of an online forum for information technology professionals found that 89% of them still sent faxes.The persistence of faxing and the people who send faxes is in part because the fax industry has adapted to accommodate new technologies. Fax machines still dominate, but both surveys suggested users were shifting to computer-based services, such as fax servers that let users send and receive faxes as electronic documents. Cloud-based fax services, which treat faxes as images or PDF files attached to emails, are also becoming more popular. These new systems can transmit faxes over telephone lines or the internet, depending on the recipient, handling paper and electronic documents equally easily.Legal acceptanceEven parts of the f ederal government preferred faxes over email for many years thereafter. Not until 2010 did the Drug Enforcement Agency allow electronic signatures for Schedule II drugs like Ritalin and opiates, which comprised about 10 percent of all prescriptions. That meant a pharmacist could accept a faxed prescription but not one scanned and sent by email.Faxs longevity also benefits greatly from reluctance both legal and social to accept email as secure and an emailed electronic signature as valid. Faxed signatures became legally accepted in the late 1980s and early 1990s in a series of legal and administrative decisions by state and federal agencies. The Electronic Signatures Act in 2000 also gave digital signatures legal power but institutional and individual acceptance followed only slowly if at all.The fruchtwein recent FBI Criminal Justice Information Services policy allows faxing from physical fax machines without encrypting the message, but demands encryption for all email and intern et communications, including cloud-based faxing. Its much harder to intercept faxes than unencrypted email messages.Faxing and medicineAnother reason faxing hangs on is because competing technologies are weak. The health care industry generates huge amounts of data for each patient. That should make it fertile ground for a fully digital record-keeping system, where data can flow easily between patient, provider, caregivers, researchers, innovators and payers, as Seema Verna, the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, put it in a speech earlier this year.Federal privacy laws and deliberately incompatible standards, however, stand in the way. Immediately after the passage of the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, fax vendors retooled their transmission, reception and storage systems and procedures to protect patients personal records. Specifically, HIPAA-compliant fax systems ensure the correct number is dialed and limit who can see received fax es. Digital patient-information systems have struggled to meet the same standards of administrative, technical and physical security.The Obama administration spent more than US $25 billion encouraging doctors and hospitals to adopt electronic medical records systems. Crucially, rather than forcing competing systems to be compatible in order to receive federal support, the administration believed the market would decide on a standard to communicate.What actually happened was that competing companies deliberately created incompatible systems. Doctors offices and hospitals that use different records databases cant communicate with each other digitally but they can via fax. For many medical professionals, particularly independent physicians, faxing is far easier than dealing with expensive, hard-to-use software that doesnt actually do what it was supposed to securely share patient information.Comfortable inertiaOne more personal factor preserving faxing is users reluctance to change. S mall businesses who find that faxing meets all their needs have little reason to spend the money and effort to try a new technology for document exchange. Every company that prefers faxes inherently encourages all its customers and suppliers to keep faxing too, to avoid messing up existing ordering processes.Its important to remember, too, that fax machines and multifunctional printers with a fax capability provide an inexpensive backup capability in case of technical problems with an internet connection, or even a cyberattack, like the Russian attack on Estonia in 2007.Absent a compelling reason or some management or government mandate, people often dont change technologies. This is true beyond faxing I drive a 2005 Camry. There are plenty of cars that are better in some way safer, more fuel-efficient, more comfortable but so long as the Camry passes state inspections and performs adequately, I can avoid the challenges and costs of buying a new car and learning how to use its new features.International popularityFaxing is still popular overseas, too. In Britain, the 2000 Electronic Communications Act encouraged but did not explicitly authorize electronic signatures. In 2018, urged partly by the European Unions promotion of electronic identification, the British Law Commission concluded that electronic signatures were indeed legal but needed significant promotion to increase their acceptance and use.Not surprisingly, a recent survey found that Britains National Health Service operated more than 8,000 fax machines. In response, the U.K.s Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Matt Hancock labeled faxing a symbol of National Health Service technological backwardness and pledged to introduce new technologies more quickly. In December, the National Health Service decided to stop buying fax machines in 2019 and end their use by the end of 2020. Thats the same goal the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Verna has for American doctors to stop faxing. Nevertheless, faxing continues because it remains better cheaper, more convenient, more secure, more comfortable than the alternatives for many people, businesses and organizations. Faxing will remain important until transmitting digital data becomes easier and more accepted. That could be a long way off, though. U.S. federal initiatives are trying to make medical records systems more compatible, but no one has yet been hired to take a key leadership position at CMS.Eventually the older generation of people more comfortable with faxing than emailing will fade away. Until then, however, fax machines will whirl away.Jonathan Coopersmith is the author ofFaxed The Rise and Fall of the Fax MachineJohns Hopkins University Press provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.Jonathan Coopersmith, Professor of History, Texas AM UniversityThis article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Video Zdenek P Bažant 2012 Honorary Membership in ASME

Video Zdenek P Baant 2012 Honorary Membership in ASME Video Zdenek P Baant 2012 Honorary Membership in ASME Video Zdenek P. Baant, 2012 Honorary MembershipZdenek P. Baant is an internationally-recognized expert in solid mechanics and structures. His size effect law is widely used in determining safety factors for large structures made of concrete and other composite materials. His models for materials behavior helps engineers design ships, aircraft, bridges, highways and nuclear containment structures. His work also includes a detailed analysis of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers in New York City.Dr. Baant is a professor of civil and mechanical engineering and materials science at Northwestern University. He earned his Ph.D. in engineering mechanics at the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences in Prague. His undergraduate degree is in civil engineering, from Czech Technical University in Prague. Dr. Baant is the author of six books and numerous journal articles.Dr. Baant come s from a long line of engineers. He is the fifth generation engineer in his family.Read more about the 2012 Recipients of ASME Honors and Awards The copyright of this program is owned by ASME.