Nokia has been kind enough to supply Sneak, and presumably a lot of other people that spend their times in suits and offices, a guide to mobile email etiquette.

The book is introduced thusly, "To avoid any… communication faux pas Nokia has brings you this guide to Email Etiquette. Ten useful tips to help emailers achieve the right tone and language to get the message across first time." (sic)

Sneak is less than impressed with some of its advice. Such as: "Use emoticons to indicate tone of voice, such as smileys". Yeah – that's a great idea in business correspondence ;-).

Avoid the use of multiple explanation marks to emphasise important points! What kind of business communications are we talking about here? Really excitable ones?

Consider your surroundings. Often a recipient will call after reading an email, if you are in the pub or on the loo it could be tricky. What? People may reply at any time, might they also suggest a thirty minute window of 'no toilet' after the sending of any mails? Maybe.

Bizarrely, it also cautions against the use of abbreviations, since the casual observer may not know what they mean. People observe emails casually? Who? Why? How? Also. If this is such an important rule, why does Nokia include a list of a such abbreviations at the back of the book?

The whole thing strikes Sneak as being a bit confused. But then, maybe you are not supposed to take it seriously anyway.

The book, a wine coloured hardbacked bad use of trees is illustrated with crude drawings of a man with sausages for fingers and cocktail sausages for thumbs – a condition that Sneak thinks would prohibit him from sending many emails from a mobile device anyway.