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Note to Self

Passive Aggressive Emails. Thanks in Advance.

In 2011, Google announced that Kansas City, Missouri would become a test site for Google Fiber, which offers a connection that's up to 100 times faster than today's basic broadband.
Is there such a thing as a perfect email? Last week, we reported on Crystal Knows, a service that predicts people's personality types just from their online writings and uses that to suggest an optimal email style for contacting them. But does an algorithm know better than us? 
So, in our newsletter, we asked you to weigh in on some of the controversies that play out in inboxes world wide.
Almost 50 of you have written back. We'll share some of your collective wisdom below and we're rolling all of it into research for an upcoming show. Because one thing has become clear here: Oh wow are we living in an etiquette minefields these days.
We also want to do a follow-up episode on particularly egregious examples of email passive aggression. Do you have one? Difficult coworkers? Snarky exes? "Well-intentioned" in-laws? Please email us (passive aggressively or otherwise) at notetoself@wnyc.org with a story or a voice memo. We can keep names and identifying information on the DL if need be.
In the meantime, here's what you have had to say about:

1. Emails that consist exclusively of the word “thanks.”

 Ify Okoro, via email:

"I do this I must confess, but I think it is needed, and the assumed awkwardness is not worth the absence of expressed gratitude."

Daniel Weiss, via email:

"Thanks is basic etiquette and it's OK to send an email with only that."

2. “Thanks in advance” = passive aggressive or polite?

Richard Goffman, via email:

"Absolutely passive aggressive, manipulative and obnoxious. I used to work with someone who ended emails with “Thank you in advance for your anticipated cooperation.” I think it is part of her signature, as if her main function and activity in life was to send out edicts. She probably included that in emails to her husband."

Seymour Ella, via email:

"... 'thanks in advance' can be many things. It can be gracious, appreciative, it can be a form of light pressure, sincere or insincere, obnoxious, snide. I think it's purely contextual... I find it sad that people think phrases like 'thanks in advance' or 'you're welcome' are hostile. They aren't in general."

Angela Zito, via email, also hates...:

"...'this is just a friendly reminder' from anyone and everyone, friends or not. It is not. It is a reminder and I am not so proud as to not know that, occasionally, I need a reminder. And I can even be grateful, though not so grateful as to reply 'Thank you.' Passive aggression at its finest. "

3. Spending the first line of an email introducing yourself, when the information is clear in both the "from" line and signature.

Dori Grinder, via email:

"I'm OK with it. Probably still won't read or respond, especially if you are trying to sell me something."

Carrie Saxton, via email:

"I hate when work emails begin with "hope you had a great weekend" or something like that. I immediately know they want something. Just get to the point! It also drives me crazy when someone changes the subject line when replying to an email so it looks like a new conversation!"

4. “Sent from my iPhone” or “Sent from my Android."

@NewTechCity - For me 'Sent from my <insert mobile device> is shorthand for 'I'm replying on the hop, probably in haste & likely with tpyos'

— Jocelyn Brewer (@JocelynBrewer) May 27, 2015
Stephen Feingold, via email:
"The iPhone footer is a way of trying to appease those who can't abide by spelling errors by suggesting it's a fiction of my big fingers on a little screen or something... You know what Andrew Jackson said about his own inability to spell? I pity the man whose imagination is so limited he can only think of one way to spell a word."

Donald Masters, via email:

"Oh, BTW, I have an iPhone, and Apple wants you to know that! It's, well, part of the overpriced, Chinese labor induced, secretly embedded, magnificently designed new Apple headquarters, that I helped pay for."

5. Writing the entire email in the subject line, leaving the body blank.

Gloria Creech, via email:

"I hate this. Difficult to read. I also hate blank subject lines."

Fedorov Kirrill, all the way from Russia: 

"Rude and incorrect. Looks like those 'Nigerian letters'."

Kate Farmer, via, well...:

Excellent reply.
(Screenshot, Note to Self)