Memorable Typos From Mass Email Mistakes


Mass emails are a highly efficient way to communicate information among your peers. Putting your whole group on the same page – literally – eliminates unnecessary back-and-forth emails, and it makes for increased productivity and an overall unified purpose among your group.

Emails sent out to entire departments or companies are thoroughly proofread and heavily scrutinized. But, inevitably a few mistakes make it through the error-checking process, and once in a great while, that error can turn a productive, purposeful message into a confusing (and sometimes comical) blunder.

A powerful storm recently wiped the power out for the entire office building at my workplace. All employees received the following message:

The power is currently out in our office building. The elevators are not working, access to the network is down and the phones are nonfunctional.

We are sorry for any incontinence and will send updates as they become available.

Please reply to this email if you have any questions.

Thank you.
Administration

(“Inconvenience” was the intended word, but the iPhone’s nifty predictive text feature felt that a slightly different word suited the purpose better. Perhaps “incompetence” would have also worked!)

Needless to say, there were quite a few followup questions, and confusion instead of clarity. We did, however, see the humor in it; a day off from work is certainly cause for excitement, but I doubt anyone got that excited.

Do you recall any memorable email mistakes? Have you ever mistakenly sent a glaring error out to a large group of coworkers?


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Peter is Vice President of Digital Marketing at an investment holdings company in Washington DC and Co-Founder at True North.

Discussion

  1. Rasmus on the 11th September

    hahah, that’s so funny 😀

    We had a typo in denmark just days ago.

    It was “Red-Cross” who has 50.000 flyers printed offset, and guess what?
    The phone-number where people could donate was incorrect…

  2. Carl Walker on the 11th September

    I expected more examples, how to resolve issues, perhaps a review of some email tools. This really is far too short to qualify as good content for an envato site. Someone dropped the ball here. I was recently denied an article submission for being too short, it was over 700 words. Come on WorkAwesome, don’t let standards drop.
    Thank you to Peter for starting what could be a fun discussion.

    • Mike Vardy on the 11th September

      Carl,

      Thanks for your feedback. We post much shorter articles on the weekend that are written by our current stable of writers. They are meant to start discussions – which this one seems to have done in that you’ve shown an interest in having it explored further (which Peter may well do).

      Thanks for taking the time to comment and give us feedback. We take all of these into account and appreciate your thoughts.

      Mike Vardy
      Editor
      WorkAwesome

  3. Elena on the 11th September

    I often sign off emails with “best regards”.. one little slip and I accidentally sent a job application email signed “best retards”. Needless to say, I never heard back!

  4. KostasNi on the 11th September

    Sending an e-mail to everyone in the building during a power outage…

    Am I the only one seeing the error in that?

    • Luce on the 14th September

      I guess that all had Iphones with them ;D

  5. alexis on the 12th September

    i read on twitter a friend who wrote, “best retards”, instead of the usual sign off.

  6. Mike on the 13th September

    Umm…

    “Do you recall any memorable email mistakes? Have you ever mistakenly send a glaring error out to a large group of coworkers?”

    You have a typo in your own closing line… send should have been “sent” . I agree with comments above; more examples, and remedies would have been much better for this article.

    • Mike Vardy on the 13th September

      Yes, a bit ironic, eh?

      Thanks for catching that!

  7. Sean Carter on the 15th September

    I usually sign my emails “Warm regards”, when I am having a hectic day, I sometimes end my voicemails I leave with people the same way #fail

    • UZ on the 22nd March

      Atleast you don’t end with “Warm Retards” … 😀

  8. Ram A on the 20th October

    there have been many incidents when “Dear” Mike have been mistyped as “Dead” Mike. especially when typing in the dark

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