Will everyone out there who thinks it’s cute, more Personal, and likely to catch my attention — please STOP calling me “Hey,” or, worse, “Hey, Guys!” To buttress my point, I wish I had kept all the missives I receive that start “Hey, Jeannette.”

Like this one, “Hey Jeannette, I’m sure you get a ton of spammy submissions so I’ll get straight to the point…” Has informality in written communications gone too far?

Even Buffer, the app that lets you schedule posts to the major social networks, is guilty: “Hey there, great work, all your Buffered posts for Jeannette Paladino are now published on Google+!” Well, I sure am glad to learn that, but couldn’t you have left out the “Hey there?”

I’m Not Your Friend

I find it’s presumptuous of people to assume they are starting a personal relationship when they send me an unsolicited email. I’m not your friend. I am a potential business contact. So please be professional in the language you use. I often receive inquiries from people who would like to write a guest post for my blog. They read like we’ve been BFF.

They vaguely describe what they would like to write about (most times completely unrelated to my brand) and then sign the email, “John” or “Jane.” No last name, no contact information. The emails could be spam, but often the writers will include links to articles they’ve written, so they are legitimate. I’m expected to do all the work to find out who they are.

It’s gotten so that I hit the delete key when an email begins with “Hey.”

Call Me Old-Fashioned

It’s expecting too much nowadays for a perfect stranger to address me as Ms. Paladino. OK, I get that. But a nice compromise is to start with, “Dear Jeannette Paladino.” It’s a little more personal and informal but doesn’t cross the line into assuming we’re already friends who call each other by first names, or “Hey there.”

I know I’m venting. But is it too much to ask that business correspondence be more — businesslike?