It's All Geek To Me - February 2nd 2005

Oh Behave! Email Etiquette by Ross Lasley About once a month or so I am called upon to “straighten out” an email communication problem – and almost always one of the parties has violated (often repeatedly) some of the basic rules of email etiquette. Those of you who know me are sure I am not “Miss Manners” in any way, but I often wonder if people that have these types of problems are really unaware of the basic rules of email. They often seem surprised by the reactions they get – and so, without further delay – I present: Ross's Rules for Email Thou Shalt not forward crap you think is amusing This is a common one , personal should be personal and forwarding jokes and such is never a good idea. Under no circumstances should you ever send to everyone in your address book at one time. Thou Shalt not forward crap you think is useful Most of those “virus removal instructions” are hoaxes; Bill Gates is not going to pay for your trip to Disney, and there is no free computer anywhere online. When I get these I wonder whether I should send back the http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org/ link.

SHOUTING is just WRONG
There is no excuse to type in capital letters – never, ever, not once, period. This includes subject lines. This is called shouting and to see what you are really saying read the message out loud and scream on the capitalized words. This is a way of indicating that you are really really angry – so I suppose if that is what you mean go ahead and hit that caps lock key.

The cc, bcc, reply all games
Email has a really cool and simple way of including people in your communication loop – cc – but you should be careful how you use it. Copying your boss in to a conversation halfway through will be seen by the recipient as obnoxious and threatening; use the bcc (blind carbon copy) instead.

Use of HTML, Subjects , and other things that trigger filters
With all the filtration that is going on you should be careful about making your message seem like something a spam filter should stop. Every message needs a subject, and while those font and color editors in your email program may seem like fun, you should send in plain text. No Subject + Pretty Colors = Spam.

Tone – :-) and LOL are necessary
Email is amazing in what it can do, and it has limits that can be difficult. The subtleties can be lost – when writing a message read it happy, read it angry, and make adjustments to your tone with smiles and abbreviations.

Quoting properly, let's meet our friend <snip>
It is inappropriate to quote a long email and then say “I agree”, instead just leave enough of the message intact for it be clear and then use <snip> to cut off the message before inserting your comments. Beyond being polite, long quoting often leads to your comments being missed by recipients.

Punctuation Overuse is Obnoxious!!!!!!
(see, that was annoying)
Most people who use lots of punctuation are actually just unaware of how smileys and abbreviations are meant to work.

Pee in a Pool can't be removed
Think about it - don't send an email when you are angry. Email is forever.

Attachments and VCF files.
If you are going to send an attachment be sure it is less than 5 megs in size and mention it in the message. A note to Outlook users: turn off those VCF files that show as an attachment with every message you send and use a signature file instead.

Legacy Functionality like Read Receipts and Recalls should not be used
Before there were so many different types of email systems, there was a way to ask for a “read receipt” message or to “recall” a message sent, and many programs still support these legacy functions. Don't use them. They are obnoxious and much of the time they don't work anyway.

Don't tell support or anyone else it is “broken”
We know you are having a serious problem: breathe and read the screen in front of you. Error codes, a succinct description of exactly what you were doing – these are things that will help the tech support desk help you.

Threads and Subjects
When corresponding with someone, if you start talking about something else change the subject line. If you want to make a record, make proper use of “was:”, as in Subject: Domain Expiration, Was:Email Problems. This is important to be able to organize and search email.

Use a signature
The bottom of every email you send should have a few lines of text, commonly your address information and details. This is a great way to give all the necessary information (anytime I ask someone to fax me, my fax number is at the bottom of the message) and to promote things in a polite way. Encourage people to sign up for your e newsletter or give them your company tag line.

click to enlarge, if you dare