How to E-Mail Like a C.E.O. Owens's findings are so striking, and so consistent, that they could serve as an unintended primer for those who want to be a boss, or at least want to be mistaken for one. If your e-mail messages are late, unevenly capitalized and sloppy, you could be C.E.O. material. If your e-mail messages are earnest and combative, or if you run them through spell-check before hitting send, then you may be destined for middle management. And if you ever use e-mail to forward jokes, send greeting cards or use happy-face "emoticons" -- well, you're giving yourself away. These are all strategies used to build social relationships within a company, to provide a kind of social lubrication. ("Gee, what a neat tie!") Owens acknowledges that those who do so play "an important role that tends to be greatly underestimated." But they are almost always low-status workers.