I like email as a means of communication. It allows you to express yourself in enough words to make sense. It's like a letter. It can be picked through by the recipient. It sits and waits for an answer, unlike the phone which needs answering right away. It can be sent and received from a vast multitude of connected devices. In summary, email is a great medium, and I've been doing something email like since about 1986 or so. 27 years of emailing.

When I first started work in IT, desktop email hadn't hit the company I was working for. I introduced it. Firstly, I introduced it in a stupid and crappy way. Then I introduced proper internet-facing desktop email - the sort of email I'd gotten used to when at University.

Nowadays, email is very prevalent. I think we can thank a few services for it. We have AOL to thank for spreading the internet a bit like a virus. Then there are the ISPs who did it properly. The advent of Blackberry and iPhone did the rest, and the copycats finished the job. Services like Hotmail really got people emailing, though Gmail is my mail cloud of choice.

None of this has anything to do with the title of this post.

If you're in business and you have a published email address... answer your goddamned emails. If you don't YOU ARE LOSING BUSINESS.

In the last month I've emailed:

• An auto repair company
• A car stereo fitter
• A gentleman's outfitter
• A dentist