Don’t Touch That Phone! Important Rules of Cell Phone Etiquette

Somewhere in history, a proper gentleman or gentlewoman is speaking on the telephone for the first time in their life and is appalled. What, no eye contact? How can you carry on a true conversation without the benefit of body language? How do we expect our tone of voice to carry through these tinny contraptions and be accurately understood when they arrive at the other end? Those complaints are most certainly outdated and old fashioned, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t still some lingering, post-1800s complications associated with our preferred method of long distance conversation, the phone. And to make matters more interesting, now many of us text just as much as we actually speak out loud, on the phone. To keep your own lines of communication clear, I’ve compiled some helpful tips for cell phone etiquette, from when to speak to what to say. (more…)