Perception is a funny thing.  I have a habit of writing emails in a fairly stream of consciousness style. Not all that dissimilar from this blog.  And as a result, punctuation and grammar are not top priority.

One of the things I do to connect thoughts is use ellipses – you know — these things …

So I’ll write stuff like “how did things go with the migration…as expected?…curious to see how clients like the new people search…”

To me, that is just a normal email.

I learned for the team, it wasn’t.

Why?

Cuz of those friggin ellipses.  I paid them no mind, but it left folks on the team confused or thinking that it was some ominous foreshadowing of something…Kind of like a “dun dun da dun” (you know the sound?) at the end of the reveal in a movie?

And so I’ve been trying (and failing at times) to stop using ellipses so much because tone and inflection are already so hard to convey via email and making it harder cuz of a few misplaced periods is something i should be able to fix.

Of course, I’ve been using … for a long time so it does require some attention by me to deprogram myself. But I’m trying.  BTW, for business purposes with clients/partners, I still maintain that I’m dope at email – like Olympic level.  But I definitely gotta work on how I do emails with the team.