Does part of your daily professional communication involve a constant flow of detailed e-mail exchanges, both internal and external? Keep your messages as easy to navigate as possible. Think of the many newsletters, promotional e-mails, and electronic resources you are literally forced to peruse every day. Obviously, no one reads everything. There are some tricks of the trade to keeping information concise, easier for your audience to find, and more visually pleasing to the eye.

Concise

Using lists can literally be a breath of fresh air after a long, cumbersome paragraph rich with technical jargon. Lists can be:

• Chronological-reporting actions or events as they took place in time
• Sequential-in one particular order
• Descending order of importance- most important item first, least important last
• Ascending order of importance- least important item first, most important item last (the bill you owe us!)

Easier for Audience to Find

Subheadings are a great way to logically separate chunks of information which will visually stand out to the reader (they’re being used in this post to help you navigate). Depending on the nature of the e-mail, this may be a strong fit. You can draw these out by italicizing, underlining, or making them bold.

In a less formalized, more back-n-forth communication, clear topic sentences would be better starts for each section. This helps your audience know what the rest of the passage is about.

More Visually Pleasing to the Eye

Use real estate on the “page” wisely. Try to avoid overuse of punctuation, such as dash marks for lists, 1,2,3, here, and a bulleted list elsewhere. Aim for consistency in your choice of layout. If anything can be appropriately annexed in an attachment, then allow it to be. The more you can say with less is better.

A final word. This week on Twitter, someone said “Business is social.” I believe it was @KikiValdes. I could not agree more, especially on this topic. If there is ever an opportunity to pick up the phone or be face to face with someone in lieu of e-mail, then do it every once in a while. Also, watch for what you enjoy or what makes you “feel good” in the personable language, style, tone, and writing characteristics of a particular writer at your work. It’s okay to borrow ideas from people; this can be the best form of flattery.

Happy writing. Remember, we want to answer your questions, so get engaged!

“The English language is essential to the Information Technology (IT) business.” Is this really true? After all, don’t Windows, MacOS, and Linux all offer the user a choice of language environments? Yes, but the key word here is user. As someone who uses a computer for business or personal reasons, you can choose your language. As an IT administrator you often don’t have that luxury. You must communicate in English.

If you go on the Internet to search for a discussion forum to help with your users’ problems or to discuss an upcoming software release, you’ll often find that English is the common language. If you attend international conferences, you’ll find presentation, papers, and proceedings are in English. Even the administrative interfaces for some software, particularly on servers, might be available only in English. Common IT acronyms are often pronounced as English words.

As an IT professional, others depend on you. Accurate and precise communication is essential. Maybe you need to know just what to ask the user who has a problem. Maybe you need to learn that new technique for software installation. Maybe you need to explain exactly why your company should spend $5000 on a new software product. How can you cope?

Developing core competency

• Use a dictionary. When you read a word you don’t know, look it up in an online or book of computer terms. Many IT terms are technical and precise in meaning, so context alone cannot always help you.
• Connect the spoken word to the written word. In presentations, notice how words and acronyms written on slides and handouts are pronounced so you will say them correctly in the future. For example, how would you pronounce the acronyms ROM and RAM. ROM rhymes with Tom. With some accents RAM might be pronounced the same way, but that isn’t correct. RAM rhymes with Sam. When you take notes, you can writing rhyming words or perhaps use the symbols from a dictionary.

Striving to excel

To become truly excellent with IT English you could take general English courses at a traditional ESL school or purchase a CD- or computer-based English course, but this might not be efficient enough for your busy schedule. Individual or small group instruction, targeted to the needs of IT professionals like you, is often a better choice. By focusing on skills like technical reading and writing, presentation skills, telephone communication, vocabulary and acronyms, you can gain confidence and win the praise of your superiors, peers, and customers. Isn’t that what you really want?

In the mean time, here are some references we’ll think you’ll find helpful

Tech Terms – an online dictionary of computer terms

Downing, Douglas A. and Michael A. Convington, Dictionary of Computer and Internet Terms, 9th edition, Barron’s Educational Series, Inc., 2006, ISBN-13: 9780764134173

What do you think? Will this help you? We invite you to write a comment or question here and share your thoughts and ideas.