Because e-mail is quick, inexpensive, and relatively new,
some users feel free to disregard the customs associated with formal
letter-writing. The inefficiencies created by ignoring these conventions quickly
build up, however, when a person receives hundreds of e-mails a day. Here's a
short list of easy-to-follow tips that will help ease the burden, and keep
"e-mail rage" to a minimum.
My Personal Rules
I don't have an excess of time to be dealing with e-mail,
so here are my personal rules for incoming messages, adapted
from Eric Alterman's.
- If the e-mail is part of a mass mailing, I delete it. I am only interested
in reading things written to me.
- If the e-mail says, "Hey check this
out," and offers a URL but no description of why I should check it out, I
delete it.
Sending and Receiving
- Check your e-mail on a regular basis!
- Read e-mail carefully and respond to
all pertinent points. When sending an email, you may want to bullet or
number the questions to which you need responses.
- Reply promptly to
the first e-mail message and all replies with substantive content with
at least a note acknowledging receipt. E-mail messages are lost or
delayed to user or technical errors all the time. Not replying is also just
plain rude.
- Use a meaningful subject line, and separate different
subjects into separate e-mails, for easy sorting by the recipient.
- Don't send e-mails
to multiple people at once unless you address the e-mail using the BCC box. (how?)
-
Don't send unsolicited commercial e-mail (spam) at all, ever.
- Don't add e-mail addresses
of your friends to the mailing lists of ANY companies.
- Don't send large attachments that take forever to download. Link to the
file on the Internet instead.
Composition
- Click Reply to reply to messages. Include the text of the original
message, otherwise people who receive many messages a day may have no idea
what you're talking about. (how?)
- If you cannot use language to express your meaning clearly, use smilies to connote
feeling :-).
- Use HTML-formatted e-mail (how?).
With HTML, you can use bold, italics, and all the other formatting typically
used in letters to highlight important points, and the lines will wrap
properly. Not all e-mail readers will be able to display HTML-formatted
e-mail, but the vast majority will handle it fine, and those that don't will
display a plain-text version.
- Don't type in ALL CAPS. This is considered to be the equivalent of
shouting, and more importantly, is harder on the eyes to read than upper and
lower case.
Common Sense
- Never give an email address to a third party or post it publicly without the consent of its owner.
- Be sensitive to those who receive many e-mails. Don't forward chain-letters
or alerts about e-mail viruses (they are all fake). If you really believe one
is real, check it out at a legitimate news website (CNN, MSNBC, etc.). E-mail
the link to the news website as verification.
Security
- Don't send any kind of program as an attachment.
- Don't open any kind of program received as an attachment.