E-Mail Etiquette

By Wynn Phillips

You would think that people would understand the electronic etiquette of the web, but many do not or choose to ignore it. Here are some rules I that will make your e-mail a pleasant experience for all.

Rule # 1: UPPER CASE MEANS YOU ARE YELLING. IF YOU RECEIVED AN E-MAIL LIKE THIS, THE SENDER DIDN’T LIKE SOMETHING AND IS YELLING AT YOU. WHETHER VIA TEXT MESSAGING ON YOUR CELL PHONE, FROM YOUR HOME OFFICE, OR FROM WORK, IF YOU TYPE IN UPPER CASE, YOU ARE YELLING. DO IT SPARINGLY!

Rule #2: if you think typing your complete e-mail in lowercase is cute, it is not. besides making your e-mail harder to read, if you are using a word processor to format your e-mail, you have to override the automatic capitalization to start a sentence or go back and retype the first letter of each sentence. lots of time wasted here. type like the rest of us, save time, and make the e-mail easier to read.

Rule #3: Sarcasm does not work in e-mail. The voice tones and inflections so important in conveying a sarcastic observation, such as “This article is really interesting!” are missing. Your statement is read and understood as written. You just complemented the person you didn’t want to encourage.

Rule #4. Do not forward jokes, cute stories, touching lists, political comments, religious insights, video files, or favorite sayings. They are the webs equivalent of unsolicited flyers found in your mail box that, at my house, are dropped directly into the trash.

Rule #5: Reply to e-mails… at least those that seem to have an expectation of resonse. How many times have you sent an e-mail, waited and waited and waited for a response, and wondered what happened? Then you bump into the person, ask them if they received the e-mail, and they say, “sure”. A quick reply by the recipient of “Thanks. I will get back to you.” or “Got your e-mail, let me check.” Or just “Thanks” lets the sender know that your e-mail did not disappear into the cosmos but arrived and was duly noted.

Rule #6: Use the “BC” option when you send out an e-mail to 50 of your friends or coworkers. The “blind copy” allows names of recipients of the e-mail to be hidden except for the receiving person who is shown in the “To” field. Your friends or co-workers don’t want their names gratuitously passed around to those 50, who add it to their forwarding list (see rule #4) which is then passed on to another forwarding list of a common friend who passes it on their forwarding list. You see my concern?

Bottom line is, we use courteous vocal greetings like “Hi” “How are ya?” and vocal farewells like “See you later”, “Have a good day”. We need to apply the same courtesies in electronic communications.