NKT! It is not an LOL matter!

In this era of advancements in communication, it amazes me how technology has not helped to improve our communication skills but has instead deteriorated them further.

There is an attempt to convey more emotions, so you find yourself using ‘lol’ for a laugh or ‘nkt’ to convey a clicking tongue. Then off course there’s the ones we sign off to close friends or our partners with ‘xxx’, meaning kiss, kiss, kiss or ‘xoxo’ for hugs and kisses.

Yes, it’s a more liberal world and we’re not so formal in our suits anymore, and the skirts have definitely gotten shorter. You don’t have to address your manager/boss as ‘sir’ and you certainly don’t have to stand at attention when he walks in.

So surely, you can forgive a couple of smiley’s here and there in some internal communication and maybe perhaps one smiley to and from a client.

But I think it’s gone a little bit too far when you sign off an official email with ‘xoxo’.

This clearly isn’t the forum for it (and makes you question the motives of the sender. I once saw an email where the client quoted a popular P-Square song ‘If you do me, I do you’ in finalising a transaction. I leave it to the readers’ discretion to interpret that any way you will…

Mistaken identity

It’s also become increasingly common that we never meet (and possibly never speak on phone) to the people we have to email for work.

Perhaps because they sit in another country, another time zone, so those conventional methods of communicating are out. And off course you want to be polite in your email and go ‘dear sir or dear madam’. So isn’t it frustrating when you can’t tell the gender of the person you are writing to?

I remember once getting an email from a very enthusiastic individual "Oh Brother Adema, you have to help me…" and it went on and on and on. Through the email I could read his frustration, I could see his anguish.

Yes, he needed my help, and yes I was in a position to sort him out and make his life easier. And yes, it was my job to do so, so perhaps imploring me so emphatically was not necessary, I was already working on his issue. But, his email annoyed me to no end. For one simple reason; I’m female, dammit.

The letters become less formal and the spelling goes to the dogs (text language in official emails — terrible stuff).

We become less concerned with what we send out and more forgiving of what we receive.

But whether we accept it or not, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is acceptable for the business environment.