Comments on: The emperor has no clothes

Question: The emperor has no clothes

andrewzipp — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:01:35 -0800

What is the politest way humanly possible to tell the CEO of my company NOT TO TYPE EMAILS IN ALL CAPS?

By: andrewzipp

andrewzipp — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:03:33 -0800

I don't really want to stick my neck out for nothing, and I guess this is better than a few years ago when he had someone print everything out for him, but still...something needs to be said.

By: o2b

o2b — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:07:20 -0800

Perhaps you could find someone who works more closely with the CEO (his secretary maybe?), and explain the situation to them.

No need to stick your own neck out, if for someone else it's not a risk.

By: ThePinkSuperhero

ThePinkSuperhero — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:12:24 -0800

But still...something needs to be said.

Are you crazy? You're gonna tell the CEO of your company he's doing something wrong? And it's something petty? Drop it. Let his friends talk to him about this. Even if he's cool about it to your face, you'll still always be That Guy in his mind.

By: Pollomacho

Pollomacho — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:17:20 -0800

I definitely second TPS on this one. Just ignore it, it's just not that big a deal.

You could just sneak into his office at some point and hit his caps lock button. Maybe he's left it on.

By: GuyZero

GuyZero — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:19:39 -0800

I have seen one or two CEO emails that were a total embarrassment. Have a laugh with cow-orkers, forget about it, move on. You don't tell a guy worth a couple billion dollars how to format his email. More to the point, tell him whatever you want - he'll ignore you.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:21:08 -0800

What ThePinkSuperhero said, unless it's a small company where everyone's on fairly honest and casual terms, and even then I'd use o2b's approach.

I'm not sure this is "petty," though. If he's sending screaming emails to clients/customers, too, he's not doing the company's image any favors. Try saying that in a nice way to his administrative assistant.

By: andrewzipp

andrewzipp — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:21:13 -0800

Ok. I won't say anything. It just seems like one of those "your fly is down" things that you would kind of hope that someone would let you know.

By: bonheur

bonheur — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:26:44 -0800

I once worked for a Nobel prize winning professor who sent emails in all caps, with little or no punctuation, strange and confusing line breaks, spelling errors, you name it. Part of the job was deciphering what it was he wanted and getting it for him, quick-like.

In other words, don't mention it. He may already know, but even if he doesn't it's not your business to enlighten him on email etiquette. Just let it slide.

By: agropyron

agropyron — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:28:29 -0800

Send him an anonymous email from an anonymous gmail account. Oh, and send it from the library, not your workstation.

By: Optimus Chyme

Optimus Chyme — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:30:59 -0800

I would just stay far away from personally critiquing the brainless plutocrats in the head office.

I AM SORY MR ZIPP OUR SAHRHOLDERS HAVE ASKED UP TO TRIM SOME FAT FOR FY 2006 AND YOU ARE BEING LET GO

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:38:13 -0800

Run all emails from him through a case-conversion filter.

By: frykitty

frykitty — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:38:33 -0800

Find a good article on email etiquette. Send it to your IT department and say you ran across this and thought it could be useful for everyone. With a little luck, they'll forward your email to the entire company. If not, the seed may be planted for an email etiquette primer of their own devising. Or not, but it's worth a shot.

It's extremely indirect, but I've seen it work.

By: grafholic

grafholic — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:39:31 -0800

sneak into his office at night and break the CAP LOCK key so it's no longer usable.

the side effect of this would be if you accidentally cap-lock it and break the key, then his keyboard is permanently set to use cap-lock. so, be careful.

By: jamesonandwater

jamesonandwater — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:43:42 -0800

I like frykitty's idea, and in a smallish company you could just send it to everyone, rather than go though IT. Or put it on the intranet. My boss sends emails without subjects. All the freakin time - to us, to clients, to his superiors, to everyone. And they're a bear to locate, file, etc. So I may well steal that idea myself.

By: I Love Tacos

I Love Tacos — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:47:54 -0800

I love the case-conversion idea.

I'm going to have to ask around, and see if that could be done.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:51:44 -0800

Is he a bad typist? Sometimes people use ALL CAPS for the same reason people use all lower in chats, because it's easier. In which case, saying it's bad etiquette won't get you anywhere.

By: biffa

biffa — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 08:52:26 -0800

Get anonymous email then send the CEO a letter explaining he is a worthless bell end and is a prick for continuing to use caps. Do not get drunk and brag about this to colleagues.

By: shepd

shepd — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 09:30:17 -0800

Surreptitiously get a client of his to run spamassassin, and have it send back an email "Your email was dumped due to: SHOUTING IN ALL CAPS. NOT ACCEPTABLE. TRY AGAIN. THANKS."

He's a CEO, customers = money = learning.

Of course, you now have the new problem of supporting spamassassin for the new client. Heh.

By: kindall

kindall — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 09:42:21 -0800

My boss sends emails without subjects. All the freakin time - to us, to clients, to his superiors, to everyone. And they're a bear to locate, file, etc.

Nothing's keeping you from adding a proper subject line after the mail arrives...

By: thinkpiece

thinkpiece — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 09:48:46 -0800

How about a good old-fashioned, politely-worded anonymous note via regular mail?

By: Aknaton

Aknaton — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 10:03:02 -0800

Tell him (lying) that it was a lucky thing that you were looking through your deleted spam, because your spam filter tends to junk things that are all caps.
"Word to the wise -- if you're worried that some of your emails to other people are getting lost, this may be the reason."
That way there's no value judgment, and you come off sounding helpful.

By: Thorzdad

Thorzdad — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 10:12:56 -0800

Your CEO sends his own emails? At my last job, his secretary did all his emailing.

Leave it alone. Just walk away. Not worth messing with.

By: Kirth Gerson

Kirth Gerson — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 10:25:08 -0800

No, not worth the trouble. Also, remember telegrams? Maybe the CEO does. They were all caps, and nobody (AFAIK) complained. Any way that you bring this to his attention, he's going to wonder why you have time to worry about this.

By: Decani

Decani — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 10:25:28 -0800

I'll second those who say ignore it. CEOs are frequently clueless about all sorts of things, including but certainly not limited to email etiquette. Once you realise this about senior management and find ways to get your job done whilst paying the absolute bare minimum of attention to them, working life becomes much easier.

By: TurkishGolds

TurkishGolds — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 10:27:13 -0800

Do you ever have to use the text he sends you for web or for print? A very annoying coworker always used to send me e-mails in ALL CAPS, but when he started sending my website copy in ALL CAPS I wrote back and simply said, "Please resend this not in ALL CAPS so that it is suitable for web use." I never saw another capital letter out of him again.

By: lampshade

lampshade — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 10:38:43 -0800

Go to Human Resources, explain the problem, show them this page on email etiquette and have them distribute it to the whole company. Do not target just the CEO. The people who will "get it" will use it. The rest, well, old dogs and new tricks.

I just came out of a company that had this same problem, but it was systemic problem - the entire company did it. I got a few people to come around through example, but I left the finger wagging to HR. Worked pretty well. Had a number of converts to the new-fangled idea of proper case, grammar and punctuation.

By: desuetude

desuetude — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 10:40:25 -0800

This could be appropriately handled by the IT director (or equivalent) who should forward basic e-mail format expectations to all employees and cc the CEO. Couching the caps issue in the possibility of spam blocks is smart.

How you do you get the IT director to do this? Have an informal chat with him about hard-to-read e-mails from staff with anedote (imaginary or not) from client as backup and come up with the brilliant solution of sending the FYI to everyone. Mention the CEO only if you can do so off-the-record, wink-wink nudge-nudge, without getting tattled on.

By: wryly

wryly — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 11:00:37 -0800

What's his phone number or email? I'll let him know for ya.

By: drezdn

drezdn — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 11:03:22 -0800

If the CEO has a secretary, you might want to casually mention it to them. There's a good chance the secretary will know the best way to bring it up to the CEO.

By: mrbill

mrbill — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 11:03:54 -0800

If you're on a UNIX-based mail system, you can always setup a Procmail rule that runs his emails through a shell script and uses tr from the GNU Textutils collection to convert any uppercase letters to lowercase.

This is assuming that you find all-lowercase letters more bearable than all-uppercase.

By: b1tr0t

b1tr0t — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 11:31:09 -0800

You could offer $20k a day private "CEO E-Mail etiquette" instruction. It might not change your CEO's mind, but hey, $20k!

By: Sharcho

Sharcho — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 12:27:23 -0800

You don't have to physically break the Caps-Lock key. You can do it with a registry setting. Key mapping utility for Windows.

I advocate mapping Caps-Lock to backspace.

By: filmgeek

filmgeek — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 12:39:42 -0800

HOW ABOUT RESPONDING TO HIS EMAILS IN ALL CAPS MAKING IT DIFFICULT FOR HIM TO READ.

POSSIBLY ALSO: SEE IF YOU CAN GET ACCESS TO HIS MACHINE AND HAVE OUTLOOK AUTORUN A NORMAL TO CAPSLOCK FILTER.

SUBMIT ALL WRITING TO HIM IN CAPS AS WELL.

SLIP A NOTE UNDER HIS DOOR SAYING "WHEN YOU TYPE IN CAPS IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A 12 YEAR OLD GIRL ON AOL WHO IS UPSET"

By: jzb

jzb — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 13:12:00 -0800

Well, what's your relationship with the CEO? What's your CEO like? What's your position in the company?

If you're two to three rungs removed from the CEO on the company ladder, then it might not be a good idea to bring it up with them. If you have a good relationship with the CEO, and/or happen to be in management yourself, then I'd go ahead and bring it up.

Sometimes, management types actually appreciate people who aren't brown-nosing, boot-licking, yes-men.

The most polite way to tell him not to type in all caps would be to just tell him, politely, "sir, I've noticed that your emails are usually in all caps. Many people consider this "shouting" and it may cause a negative reaction when people receive your email."

By: reverendX

reverendX — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 13:35:00 -0800

I know people who have visual problems that need to type in all caps. Is this a possible reason?

By: Four Flavors

Four Flavors — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 13:57:59 -0800

If you're using MS word to read emails: select the text and hit {SHIFT + F3}, which will lower-case it.
Of course, this is a workaround, not a solution.

By: rafter

rafter — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 14:29:03 -0800

I know people who have visual problems that need to type in all caps. Is this a possible reason?

It's far easier to read text that isn't in caps. In ALL CAPITAL LETTERS YOU DON'T SEE THE UNIQUE SHAPE OF A WORD, and legibility decreases.

If the CEO has eyesight problems he should enlarge his font, lower his resolution, or use an accessibility tool.

By: i_am_joe's_spleen

i_am_joe's_spleen — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 15:09:02 -0800

Hah. Suck it up, mate. The CEO where I work sends emails via his secretary, comprising empty wrappers with huge PDF attachments, written entirely in the passive voice, laden with business bullshit, every other sentence ending in "going forward". The "From" header says "CEO's Desk". Too bad the desk can't write for shit.

Luckily since I'm a contracter it's safe to delete them unread.

By: rmhsinc

rmhsinc — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 15:57:54 -0800

I am the CEO of a small organization (220)employees--if I was consistently doing something insensitive, inappropriate or out of context I would appreciate a thoughtful nudge--and-- I can assure you it would only heighten my confidence in the person pointing it out--Bosses vary as do employees--most people want the respect of those with whom they work (including bosses)--I can tell you, it is very tempting to isolate yourself from the staff because you know that on any one minute a good number of them are unhappy/disenchanted/angry/disappointed with you. Good luck on this issue--it is tricky but I would appreciate it.

By: coriolisdave

coriolisdave — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 17:50:15 -0800

If that's the case, rmhsinc -- can I introduce you to Mr. Period? Whilst useful, "--" in most of your preceding comment should be replaced with "."

No snark intended -- it's honestly something that (a) gives me the shits, (b) gives other people the screaming ab-dabs, and (c) I do too much myself ;).

By: Rock Steady

Rock Steady — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 18:04:27 -0800

Great input, rmhsinc. I think you have to look at it from a corporate perspective. If I was a client of a tech-related company and I got emails from the CEO in all caps, my opinion of that firm would be pretty seriously downgraded. If we are talking about a box manufacturer, it's a slightly different story, but I'd like to think that the person in charge of the companies I do business with is with-it enough to know that it is a faux pas.

If you are concerned about the image and appearance of your company, andrewzipp, I think you have to say something. Maybe avoid the netiquette angle if your CEO is not tech-savvy, but rather focus on the very real legibility angle rafter brought up -- tell her that she is making life more difficult for the employees/clients/customers she is communicating with.

By: rmhsinc

rmhsinc — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 19:17:36 -0800

I use dashes all the time. Are they really a distraction to readers. No one has ever mentioned it before. I write 10-30 emails daily. I just do not want to worry about proper sentence construction. Additional input would be appreciated. If the answer is that I have to use properly constructed sentences I am straight back to the dashes or something to separate sentence fragments. Thanks

By: coriolisdave

coriolisdave — Thu, 13 Oct 2005 20:53:45 -0800

I'm honestly curious -- why do you want to avoid properly constructing sentences? The reason I ask, is that it doesn't seem too difficult (to me) to insert basic, mostly-appropriate punctuation in order to create. This may be a reflection on me and the way I think, but I'm honestly not sure. Certainly, 10-30 emails a day is a light day for me, but I take a bit of exta care to try to remove any ambiguity from my writing*.

At the end of the day, just looking at the two examples of your writing style here in the thread it's probably just a matter of mixing up your punctuation a bit more -- throw in some comma's, a couple of dashes, and your last post won't sound like a telegram ;)

* Note that I usually fail ;) Also, please note that my point of view may be completely irrelevant in this day and age of ROFLOMGBBQ!@!!!@1!11 eleven.

By: mediareport

mediareport — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 00:06:41 -0800

I use dashes all the time. Are they really a distraction to readers.

Are you kidding? You're using a grammatical construction that almost no other English writer in the world uses, and you're wondering if it's a distraction? Hell yes, it's a distraction. Who the hell are you to mess with grammatical norms anyone with a high school education would have internalized long ago? Please.

Use standard grammar. Forcing others to adjust to your writing idiosyncrasies is the height of CEO arrogance.

By: Kirth Gerson

Kirth Gerson — Fri, 14 Oct 2005 03:31:38 -0800

I just do not want to worry about proper sentence construction.

I also question why that is. It has always puzzled me how people can take great pains to make sure they write elegant, functional code, but when writing for people, just throw words out and expect others to sort out the meaning. Your dashes are far better than the groups of ellipses that some people favor (those writings are completely unreadable), but they are a distraction. People can deal pretty well with random punctuation errors, but when every instance of punctuation is wrong, it is irritating. You'd rather be right most of the time, wouldn't you?

By: Sharcho

Sharcho — Sat, 22 Oct 2005 06:36:25 -0800

HEY WHOEVER IN ASKMEFI SAID HOW DO I GET MY BOSS TO STOP USING CAPS LOCK THIS THREAD IS HOW, ASK HIM IF YOU WANT TO LOOK LIKE THESE LOOOSERES HE WILL SAY NO11!!!!
posted by selfmedicating at 2:28 PM CET on October 22 [!]

By: limeonaire

limeonaire — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 18:06:53 -0800

There's nothing wrong with long dashes in sentences, when used correctly. They're a great less-formal alternative to semicolons...

By: frogan

frogan — Tue, 06 Dec 2005 21:39:48 -0800

I'm wondering if there's some email rule that will translate his emails into all lowercase ... hmm ...