E-mail Etiquette

by Jacky Vaniotis

Published in the Summer 2005 edition of the Maine EMS I/C News

E-mail has become such an integral part of our communication that we often use it without thinking. There are, however, some general rules of etiquette that everyone who writes by e-mail should keep in mind.

Use a relevant subject line.

Always use a detailed subject line. A subject line saying something like “FYI” means nothing to your recipient. Because many people save their e-mail for future reference, and also search through it when they need particular information, providing them with a detailed subject line makes finding a particular topic much easier for them.
Similarly, if your message contains several topics, it might be worth breaking it up into several messages, so that each subject line will reflect the content of that separate message.

Avoid ALL CAPITALS.

All capitals suggest that you are shouting, and should be avoided – unless, I suppose, you really are shouting. Additionally, if you’ve ever tried to read a document that’s in all capitals, you know that it’s much more difficult to skim through quickly; our eyes are trained to read a combination of upper and lowercase letters. You can use all caps for emphasis, but you should not use them for entire messages.

Use proper punctuation, grammar, and spelling.

Just because e-mail is quick and easy is no excuse to ignore common grammar, spelling, and punctuation rules. Use your spelling and grammar checkers if you have them, and re-read your messages to correct errors before you send.

Know when to end.

Sending e-mail messages back and forth can become a never-ending task when neither party knows when to end the thread. If the discussion is about meeting for lunch, and the first person sets the details, then the second person acknowledges them, very often the first person feels the need to acknowledge the acknowledgment, and the second person then feels the need to acknowledge the acknowledgment of the acknowledgment... If you have nothing new to add, there’s no need to continue these endless responses.

Remember that not everyone’s e-mail can read HTML.

If you use italics, bold, bullets, or other formatting, people who are receiving it as text-only won’t see these highlights. Keep that in mind as you compose mail. If you aren’t sure if your recipients can read HTML, send your e-mail out in “text” format.
Also, use blank lines (hard carriage returns) to separate your paragraphs. Avoid using just tab stops to begin each new paragraph, as different e-mail programs may show the tab stops differently on your recipients’ screens.

Reply carefully.

First of all, make sure you are replying to whom you think you are replying. Your e-mail can be set up to default to reply only to the sender, or to reply not only to the sender but to everyone who received the original message. If you think you are replying only to the sender, but are set up to reply to everybody, you could find yourself in an embarrassing situation.
            Also, set your reply options so that your current response is going to appear above the original message. That saves the reader from having to scroll down to the bottom of your message to search for your reply, and risking possibly missing your reply altogether.
            Do keep the text of the original thread in your reply, as well. Some people feel that it’s “cleaner” to create a new blank message instead of including the original message in their replies. But if your recipient gets lots of e-mail, he may not remember what exactly he had sent you, and then he has to go hunting through his sent items to find out what you were replying to.
            Trim the quote down, however. In other words, if the original message to which you are replying is 12 paragraphs long, but you are only responding to a single sentence in one of the paragraphs, delete all the rest of the message, and include only the pertinent sentence in your reply.
            Sometimes you want to reply to several sections of an original message. In this case, it’s best to create your reply by quoting the original message, as usual, but then to incorporate your responses into the original message. This can be very tricky, and definitely requires some time and attention on your part. Remember, not everybody’s e-mail can read HTML. So if you are responding using a different color, or font, or italics, or some other style, for example, in order to make your reply stand out, and your recipient receives mail as “text only,” he won’t be able to easily distinguish your reply from his original message, as it will all look the same. What you need to do is make the original text stand out as separate from your reply in such a way as to ensure that text-only programs will be able to read it. You will need to play with the options on your own e-mail program, as each of them handles this differently, but, for example, in Microsoft Outlook, I set my options so that each line of the original message has a prefix (in my case, a “>” but it can be whatever you choose) setting it off. My response, however, has no prefix, making it stand out.

Don’t forward bulk mail.

We all already know about the little boy with cancer who wants to receive the greatest number of e-mail messages so he can get into the Guinness Book of World Records. We’ve already heard about the guy who woke up in a bathtub of ice with a kidney missing. We all know that the federal government is planning to begin charging for every single e-mail message. We’ve heard about the do-not-call list for cell phone numbers. While it may be okay to forward these kinds of messages to your good friends, rethink it: even your friends may not wish to receive them!
If you feel you must forward that kind of bulk, at the very least, first confirm that it’s not a hoax. There are lots of sites on the Internet that you can use to do exactly that, but what I find easiest of all is simply to copy some of the body of the message and paste it right into Google. If it is a hoax, Google will send you to one of the Internet hoax sites.

Use the “Priority Mail” flag only for priority mail.

Another feature that people can set in their e-mail options is the “priority” flag for out-going mail. Make sure that your default is not set that every message you send out goes out flagged as “high priority.” And if you are setting individual items as high priority, make sure that the recipients would agree with you that these are high priority items.

Use attachments with care.

Many people compose their e-mail in their word processing software, and just send the document, even if it’s just a simple message, as an attachment. If your message can be copied instead into the text box of the e-mail message window, that’s where it should go. There are a number of issues with attachments, not the least of which is that it is attachments that are most likely to be infected with viruses and worms, and therefore need to be opened by the recipient with the utmost care.
Also remember that systems have different capacities for handling e-mail attachments. An attachment that’s too large for somebody’s system can bog it down for days as they try to eliminate it. Make sure you know the capacity of your recipients’ e-mail boxes if you are going to be sending pictures, movies, or other large files.
One kind of attachment is the vCard, which is essentially an attachment containing your contact information. Once again, not all e-mail systems can read those. And remember, if you have your options set to routinely send your mail with a vCard, it appears to others that every single message you send contains an attachment. Your recipients might grow tired of opening your attachments only to find out it’s the same old vCard

but there may come a time when you send a real attachment or an updated card, which they may not open because they would assume it’s just the same old vCard!

Consider the sensitivity of the content.

Always think about whether you want what you’ve written to be seen by eyes other than those of the recipient. If you are sending something personal to somebody’s work address, bear in mind that this person’s employer may read that e-mail. Also keep in mind that mail that you send to one person can very easily be forwarded by that person to another. The bottom line is to remember that e-mail is neither secure nor confidential, and shouldn’t be considered such.

Address your mail correctly.

Use the “To” field for the actual recipient, the one who needs to take action on the e-mail. Use the “CC” field for those people who should be aware of content of the message, but who do not need to act on it. Just because people can be cc’d on a message doesn’t mean they should be. Ask yourself if the cc recipient really needs to see a copy of your message.
BCCs are a mixed blessing. They’re great for sending mail out to numbers of people without disclosing to all the recipients the other recipients’ addresses. On the other hand, when they are being used to hide from one person that the message to him was also being sent to somebody else, there’s the question of fairness – why don’t you want the original recipient to know you’ve BCC’d someone else?

Following these basic guidelines will make your e-mail communications more ineffective. And the people who receive your messages will appreciate the little extra effort you took to make the messages as user-friendly as they could be.