Making matters worse, rudeness and anger in business e-mail seem more over the top than in face to face situations. I've hired Hawley Roddick to write a guide to using e-mail for the firm. Here are the main points from the discussion of e-mail. The organizational hierarchy is flattened out by e-mail, so gaining access to people at the top is easier than ever before. When inappropriate or slipshod e-mails are sent to senior management that would not be sent as paper copies, the sender's career may be jeopardized.
Paper trails evaporate between our people and our clients.
We must have copies of these exchanges. Tone is hard to communicate on-line and requires extra sensitivity from writers. Moreover, rudeness, anger, and contentiousness surface more readily in e-mail exchanges than elsewhere. E-mail copies are often distributed to too many people. Replies to e-mails are unintentionally posted to an entire distribution list that are intended only as a reply to the author of the original posting.