Principals of use was discussed in assignment 3. The assignment asked us to discuss ones we could use. Here’s my assignment for that one.
One principal I think I’ll try to incorporate is the E-mail subject line or what the lesson calls headline. While I personally read every message, as the subject line may not be enough or not read it all, I know that we are communicating with sighted individuals who use their eyes to read, not their ears. Their eyes tell them what they need to know, while access technology does not read the entire subject line, depending how long it is. I don’t think i’ve ever used more than 7 words in my subject lines, but I like the idea.
I think being clear on your E-mail is important. Number 2 of this lesson talks about how some E-mail is written in such a way where someone needs to only come in on certain days, and work from home other days, while showing respect to the supervisor. I think thats important.
I also think that not sending E-mail while angry is a good idea. You may send a bad impression. That may or may not backfire against you and your image depending on what the situation is.
The final thing I think we all need to do is make sure we spell people’s names correctly. I definitely need to work on that by using my access technology to go through the person’s name letter by letter. I misspelled Sean’s name when writing him. Sean is an instructor with universal class who teaches the internet specialist 101. I ended up reading his name once, and vowed to spell it correctly. He never corrected me, but I made it a point not to write Shawn or Shaun, once I realized that I needed to change the spelling. I think he never sent anything about correcting me as Sean is spelled differently, but yet the synthesizer says Shawn or Shaun the same.