(Parenthetical statements 101)

Taken from an email sent this morning…

As we’ve established that I’m horrendously organized and logical and my emails sound like scientific treatises (albeit with far more parenthetical statements than are generally found in such worthy tomes) I shall start off this email with a teense of gloat.

[snip]

I am relaying a request to you from a few of my friends: they want photos of me. I know [name omitted] would kinda like to see a photo of the five of us so he can see who I’m talking about (I don’t have much in the way of photo goodness of Mary or Wes) and there are a few folks who want to see what I look like now (since I haven’t posted any new photos of me in a few months).

See what I mean about the parentheticals? You let even one in, and it brings a friend, and then they invite all their friends over, and suddenly your emails are just one big parenthetical party and no actual communication gets done.

Right. Didn’t this email have a point?

Suddenly I understand why my friends settle in to read emails from me with bottles of aspirin and antacids. I probably should be stopped for the good of humanity.

• ‹ previous
• 1034 of 1667
• next ›