WORKING across a broad front of industry, commerce, education, government and technology, I visit and work inside many organisations across the planet. While some are more advanced than others, all are struggling to keep up and keep ahead. Among the most common management complaints are those related to email overload. Quantity is often cited as the key problem, but I suspect it is more a matter of relevance, style and common sense.

Only one generation ago paper proliferation was promoted by the photocopier, and everyone got a copy in parallel, just in case they needed to know. The generation before relied on carbon copies and travelling files. Triplication of a typed original was easy, but beyond that carbon paper faded rapidly.

In the email world there is a carbon paper equivalent: CC = carbon copy, and BCC = blind carbon copy. The problem appears to be that people love CC, and electronically copy to everyone. But unlike carbon, electronic copies are as good as the original, and unlimited, and I have seen messages simultaneously copied to 400 or more people. If only the senders would discover BCC, then the 400-line address header would be invisible and the message shorter and more accessible. If you are working on the move, using a mobile or fixed telephone line with a low bit rate modem, it is extremely inconvenient and time-consuming to download all this irrelevant information.

Email falls between a telegram and a letter, far more communicative than the former, but far less formal than the latter. Among the worst practices I have seen is the full-blown formal business letter with header, footer, Dear Sir/Madam, and Yours Sincerely, copied into the email page, or worse, copied as an attachment. This is another inconvenient and unnecessary practice. What a waste of everyone's time, writing, reading, downloading, decoding, and sometimes finding that you cannot translate from the sender's obscure word processing package.

Email is about communicating fast and efficiently. It was developed during the initial stages of the Internet when pipes were narrow and computers slow, and it is intentionally informal, free from the constraints established by the paper past and Dickensian mindsets.

If only the originators of all communication would be considerate to their audience and desist from wearing their eyes out with unnecessary words, not to mention bombarding everyone with irrelevant stuff just because it is easy to do. As a general rule, the value of any document or communication is inversely proportional to its length and weight. Quantity seldom equates to quality.

People have different personae in the flesh, on the screen and telephone, and certainly in the hand-written and typed letter. They also behave differently at home, work and play. The e-world offers a further degree of freedom that ought not to be infected by the bad or irrelevant practices of the dead world of the quill pen.

Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is:
http://cochrane.org.uk