Email is a blessing. It provides rapid, written communication and gives us a way to send documents and photographs to destinations all over the world.

Many among us, however, treat our e-mail messages as very rough drafts that are never edited before being disseminated. I’ve known administrators of large organizations to send typo-ridden emails that require extra time for readers to decipher.

Writers who are careless with seemingly internal email communication forget that email messages are often forwarded to external recipients. When those emails are read by potential clients or other individuals with influence, the image of the email-writer’s organization can be seriously damaged.

More and more we are seeing the careless email-style of writing creep into other communications. I recently had the honor of judging nominations of persons whose volunteer work would be recognized with a prestigious award. Each written nomination was submitted on behalf of the nominee by someone else.

Unfortunately, some of these nominations were written entirely in lowercase (as often seen in emails); one even lacked periods to delineate sentences, and several had typographical errors and misspellings.

My dilemma, as a judge, was how much (or even whether) to let the nominator’s lack of care as a writer cause me to question the contributions of the nominee. I felt sorry for the good nominees whose opportunity to receive the award was imperiled by the very person who wanted them to win.