The Internet, Intranets, and Extranets - Principles of Information Systems - page 286

BlackBerry users have instant
access to e-mail sent to their
business account.
(Source: Courtesy of Marvin
Woodyatt/Photoshot /Landov.)

e-mail messages, text messaging, and other forms of text communications. These abbrevia-
tions are normally not appropriate for business correspondence.

Table 7.6

Expressions Abbreviations

Some Common Abbreviations
Used in Personal E-Mail

;-) Smile with a wink AAMOF—As a matter of fact

;-( Frown with a wink AFAIK—As far as I know

:-# My lips are sealed BTW—By the way

:-D Laughing CUL8R—See you later

:-0 Shocked F2F—Face to face

:-] Blockhead LOL—Laughing out loud

:-@ Screaming OIC—Oh, I see

:-& Tongue-tied TIA—Thanks in advance

%-) Brain-dead TTFN—Ta-Ta for now

Some companies use bulk e-mail to send legitimate and important information to sales
representatives, customers, and suppliers around the world. With its popularity and ease of
use, however, some people feel they are drowning in too much e-mail. 18 Over a trillion
e-mail messages are sent from businesses in North America each year. This staggering number
is up from 40 billion e-mail messages in 1995. Many messages are copies sent to long lists of
corporate users. Users are taking steps to cope with and reduce the mountain of e-mail. Some
companies have banned the use of copying others on e-mails unless it is critical. Some e-mail
services scan for possible junk or bulk mail, called spam , and delete it or place it in a separate
file. More than half of all e-mail can be considered spam. Some business executives receive
300 or more spam e-mails in their corporate mailboxes every morning. Mukesh Lulla, pres-
ident of TeamF1, a networking and security-software company, receives 300 to 400 e-mail
messages daily, not including spam. 19 While spam-filtering software can prevent or discard
unwanted messages, other software products can help users sort and answer large amounts
of legitimate e-mail. For example, software from ClearContext, Seriosity, and Xobni rank
and sort messages based on sender, content, and context, allowing individuals to focus on
the most urgent and important messages first.