A friend recently asked me why i start all my emails with "Dear ...", and i end all my emails so formally with, "Peace, Aizuddin Danian". I replied to him that's how i've always written my emails. In fact, that's how i write all my letters, digital or handwritten.
It got me thinking, why would he find that strange and unusual?
Looking through my inbox, both at work and at home, it seems that very few people do as i do. Of course, there is nothing inherently right or wrong with any style, but i have certainly noticed the way people write their emails are very different from how they would write a physical letter.
I wonder why is that?
Why do people feel that an email should be/can be written in a manner totally different that how they would handle physical letter? Aren't the two the same, in essence. Are there a different set of rules governing emails?
I think it has a lot to do with the perception we have towards emails. Many emails don't start with salutations because we don't feel we need to have one in emails; in physical letters, its different, because of the time and physical effort it takes to write one, we put more effort into personalizing it in an attempt to make the person reading feel that the letter is meant for him. Perhaps, a proper signature was never part of the "email-psyche" simply because it was impossible to have one; on a written document, it is a matter of pride and personal satisfaction to sign-off with a flourish and flair: the signature means something to us, the writer, and to him, the recipient.
I've never felt that emails are any different from physical letters. I've written more than my fair share of both, and while i think the balance has certainly swayed in favour of the expediency emails provide, i still take joy in writing the odd letter to the people truly close to me. An email, or a letter, is an expression of me to you, and i think that really only means something if i try my best to treat them both in the same way.
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