How to use the phone

E-mail use is quite common nowadays but you can still find handbooks on how to use it. In a similar vein, Clay Shirky points to a reference work from an earlier time, the 1940s, that explains how to make proper use of that era's new-fangled communications technology, the telephone.

Some of the advice it offers may sound oddly familiar to Netizens:

Over the telephone ... you voice -- and your voice alone -- is you. It's not just what you say but how you say it that results in making friends and and that smooths the way for the quick, pleasant transaction of the business at hand.