Paul Babicki Career technology sales and marketing professional, Paul Babicki, is the founder and president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a company that sells email filtering and internet security systems, as well as email grammar, tone and content software and is currently developing an email IQ rating system, Netiquette IQ. Paul also writes a popular blog for email Netiquette, hosts an email etiquette radio program on BlogTalkRadio and has a discussion group with Yahoo. He is a member of the International Business Etiquette and Protocol Group and consults for the Gerson Lehrman Group, a worldwide network of subject matter experts. Over the past twenty-five years, Paul has gained an extensive background in electronic communications by selling and marketing within the information technology marketplace, including products for store and forward messages, mainframe communications software, email, communication protocols, mini computers, along with security products and services. He also is president of Tabula Rosa Systems, a providers of many Internet products and services.

1. TITLE INFORMATION
NETIQUETTEIQ
A Comprehensive Guide to Improve, Enhance and Add Power to Your Email
Babicki, Paul
CreateSpace (264 pp.)
$18.95 paperback
ISBN: 978-1481849524; September 14, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
A revealing primer on the art of effective emails and other communications.
Babicki, in his debut self-help guide, covers the many peculiarities of computerized messaging: How to shape an
eye-catching subject line; how to troubleshoot error messages from a returned email; what the file-extension suffixes on
attachments mean; what the email time stamp tells others about your personality (night owl vs. early riser); and how to
craft a corporate email security policy. His advice on these sometimes-arcane topics is precise—“RTF format should
only be used when it is certain that the recipient uses Outlook”—while also remaining intelligible to laypeople. The
author also instructs readers on time-honored principles of proper English and clear expression. He delves with detailed
lucidity into rules of grammar, punctuation and usage; prescribes the proper formatting of numbers and dates; and
inveighs against the dangling participle. He also explores the tonal shadings of different kinds of salutations, crusades for
concise and gracious style, warns against the gassy redundancy of such wordings as “final outcome” and “at an early
time,” and appends a blacklist of “the most irritating phrases,” from “out of the box” to “team player.” Good writing
grows from good thinking, so he instructs readers on the pitfalls of logical fallacies, from the ad hominem attack to the
begged question, and on the distinctions between assumption, presumption and inference. Furthermore, since
communication is the cornerstone of civilized life, he limns its legal and moral underpinnings in copyright and
plagiarism strictures, codes of courteous Internet deportment and techniques for pacifying flame wars. (He recommends
a “Zen” approach, for example, in replying to angry missives.) The result is a mashup of Strunk and White, Miss
Manners, Aristotle and Microsoft Help, all laid out in a well-organized, very readable text sprinkled with amusing
examples and phrased in the tart, aphoristic style of an exacting schoolmaster (“The better it sounds, the more it is
trusted”). Overall, Babicki’s technical expertise and literary aplomb make this a fine manual for the everyday scribe.
A comprehensive, stimulating guide to getting the word out.
Kirkus Indie, Kirkus Media LLC, 6411 Burleson Rd., Austin, TX 78744
indie@kirkusreviews.com