(From the London-based Plain English Campaign's weekly newsletter)

According to a survey, French office workers are most likely to be irritated by waffle in e-mails. The survey, which also covered staff in the UK, Germany, Spain and Italy, found that across all the countries it was senior staff who were more likely to take offence at waffle.

Spelling and grammar also cause problems, with 81% of people saying mistakes create negative feelings about the writer. Nearly half of senior managers said such mistakes were a sign of laziness or disrespect.

The telephone company palmOne, which commissioned the survey, followed up with a sensible list of guidelines for sending effective e-mails. But we weren't too impressed by their newly-coined phrase to describe this approach: "a smarter E-ttitude".