Don't Presume Everyone Is On Social Media

I recently saw a story of a woman who did not get an invitation to her brother's wedding. There had been no fight; no reason to think she was deliberately excluded. When she questioned it, she was told that he had posted a message on Facebook that anyone who wanted to attend should let him know. She had not seen the message.

Leaving aside the fact that you should be making a list and sending out invitations to something as important as a wedding, this man was leaving the guest list for his wedding up to both the vagrancies of the internet and chance.

Even those of us who do use Facebook, do not necessarily check it every day or see every post that worms its way through our news feed. It would be easy to miss it.

I know it probably seemed an easy way to do it to this man's mind. He left the planning of the guest list up to others. If they really wanted to go, they would be checking his Facebook feed or making a point to contact him.  This completely ignores the fact that it would be rude for people to contact him asking for an invitation to the wedding. 

You would think he would at least send invitations to immediate family and close friends regardless of whether they saw or responded to his post. He also put himself in a position of including people who probably are not that important to him.  After all, Facebook includes acquaintances as well as close friends and family and you just told everyone on your friend list that they can come.

Facebook and Twitter and the other forms of social media are wonderful tools. They let us catch glimpses into each others lives in ways we never could before. They let us quickly start the passing of important or even semi important news.  But using them as the exclusive way to handle something this important is rather like taking out a billboard on the highway and then being annoyed if not everyone drove that way.

Skip the hurt feelings and the confusion and the potential that important people may miss your important event. Go ahead and use Facebook or Twitter as a starting point but not assume it absolves you of any further work.  Take the time and do it right.

Keep Your Spell Checker To Yourself

People some times misspell words or use the wrong punctuation mark. We do not always use proper grammar. This is especially true of instant message, texting and emails. Maybe we are in a hurry and missed that typo. Maybe we do not know the right way to spell that word.

Now you get that email and you go to respond but you decide to use spell checker first. Spell checker is not concerned about good manners. Spell checker has one job; to destroy that misspelled word. Because it has no boundaries, it may very well tell you there is a misspelled word in that original email.

I have had several people ask what they should do. Do they correct that misspelled word in the original email or tell spell checker to skip it?

The answer is absolutely unequivocally no, you do not correct the spelling in the original message. You may check your own contributions to make sure they are correct but you never correct anyone else (other than your own young children) on anything other than your own name or the name of your immediate family.

To correct the spelling of an adult is to treat them like a child. It is not your place and it will not be appreciated.  This does not mean that you should misspell the word when you respond. It just means you do not draw attention to any errors.

Worry about your own spelling and grammar but do not project it to someone else. We all make mistakes and if we all start pointing them out, all it will do is cause a lot of hard feelings.  At its base, etiquette is all about helping people get along.