This blog entry won't make a lot of sense unless you read the previous post, about the issue with Obama and his toast to the Queen. If you read that blog post, I hope you will see that we made no criticism of the President of the USA. Whether we support President Obama's politics or not (and of course, we don't talk politics in polite company), we respect the office of the President. I think you will agree that the point of the blog post was that we should be focusing on everyday etiquette, and not get distracted about the pages and pages of rules about meeting the Queen of England.

Most readers got that, and sent some very positive notes thanking us for our take on the issue.

However, one person didn't get it. She read the headline and jumped to the assumption that we were criticizing the President. Then she went on to send a very blunt email in (mostly) all capitals. Let me share the first sentence of her email with you and then comment on it:

"iF THAT IS ALL YOU CAN FIND ABOUT OUR PRESIDENT KEEP YOUR SILLY MANNERS TO YOUR SELF YOU CANNOT FIND ANY DIRT ON HIM SO YOU SO YOU COME UP WITH THIS"

Now, I wish that this were an isolated example of what we see in emails and on social media, but it isn't. If you view the comments on any YouTube video, you see comments that are inflamatory, off the mark, and obscene. On Facebook, we see frequent cases of people misinterpreting one another and getting into verbal wars -- some of which turn into threats of violence.

Some of you might be thinking that this person might just be an outlier who didn't or couldn't understand the blog, or is so biased with her point of view that she can't listen. Again, there are millions of people mis-using email and social media everyday in the same manner, and so I know that this is a common example. Also, we have received another email from this person before -- and that one was perfectly cordial and polite; so we have to assume that this person is a kind, civil, and intelligent individual 99.9% of the time. This particular email just didn't reflect that fact.

The bottom line:

Remember that there is someone else receiving your email -- a very real person with a family who loves them and who they love back. If you want to respond to someone, first make sure that you really understand their point of view and what they are saying. Then give them the benefit of the doubt, by asking questions to make sure you understand. Finally, present your own view in a well-thought out way, and don't use all caps as if the email was talking to someone with a hearing problem.

Email is a relatively new technology, and we have to adjust how we communicate with it to make sure that we have impact and are seen as a credible, well-mannered communicator.