<aside> 👇 Navigate to other sections of our Slack guide:
Slack Channel guidelines Reducing noise in Slack
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To keep our communication over Slack streamlined, organized and less noisy, we’ve set some guidelines and conventions that we all need to adhere to. Please use these for reference when messaging within our Slack Workplace
Formatting helps add detail and clarity to messages in Slack. It makes it easier for your message to be seen and understood.
👇 Here are four rules for formatting messages at Oyster:
1️⃣ Write whole messages. Sending a single thought as many separate messages makes it hard to use threads and emoji reactions, and hard to share or search for the message later. So, write your whole message before pressing enter. (If you need line breaks, use Alt + Enter or Shift + Enter)
<aside> 👉 One message = one topic: When sharing separate topics & thoughts, be sure to send separate messages for each topic/thought. easy threading of replies and searchability.
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❌ The wrong way:
In this example, Bran has posted five messages (indicated by emoji reactions) to communicate one thought. This will split the message into five parts, making it confusing to reply in a thread. It will also send five notifications to the channel, creating unnecessary additional noise.
✅ The right way:
In this example, Bran made use of the line break command shift + enter to communicate the whole message in one post, making it easy to reply to the whole message in a thread and creating only one notification.
2️⃣ Always use formatting to aid communication. Slack supports italics, bold, strikethrough and code formatting.
3️⃣ Use Lists. If you're writing a message that includes a list, use the bulleted and numbered lists to make it easier to understand.
4️⃣ Edit, don't asterisk. If you have a typo, don't send another message as a correction* - edit the original message. The same goes if you need to add more detail. You can include a note, for example: “Edited for clarity” to make sure readers know that you’ve changed the original message.
You can also use strikethrough to mark the parts of your message that are not relevant anymore.
5️⃣ Always hyperlink. Hyperlinking words within your messages will make them look better and easier to read. You can also bold hyperlinks to make them stand out a bit more!
