When talking about email etiquette, the most common question I hear is, "Why should I care?". Sending email seems to be pretty straightforward; you just type and go, right? It never hurts anybody.
If you aren't aware of the effects of poor email habits, or simply don't know good email habits from bad, you could be unknowingly contributing to decreased Internet speed, spread of viruses, increase of spam, and bad public relations for yourself or your business.
Here's a list of do's and don'ts of email etiquette, and the why's behind them.
Rule number one for sending email in any form is: be courteous. Actually, this goes for anything in life, come to think of it. However, for our purposes today, let's focus on being courteous and respectful when sending email. Let that be your underlying intention throughout all the points below.
Subject Lines: |
Hint: I wait to write my subject line until after I've written the body of the email, then the description is more accurate. I also have my email program set to warn me when I've forgotten to include a subject line in case I forget. |
Attachments:
When sending attachments, keep the file sizes down. I see unneccesarily large file sizes most often with people using high speed connections. It's a common misconception that most of the world uses high-speed. Not so. Keeping file sizes down does two things: 1) It makes download time manageable for those with dialup connections; and 2) It uses less bandwidth which, on a collective basis, will contribute to faster overall Internet performance.
Formatting:
There is debate on whether or not to format your outgoing emails with bolding, colours, italics, pictures and other fun stuff. You can acheive formatting using HTML (the same language web pages are written in) or Rich Text formatting (A Microsoft thing), and it can be a lot of fun. Incredimail is a good example, as it has recently grown in popularity for sending animated emails.
I realize the allure of formatting email is strong, especially when you don't realize the trouble it can cause. But I urge you to have a look at these facts, then decide how fun it really is:
Did you know that HTML email can contain viruses? What if your computer is infected with a virus that your anti-virus software didn't pick up? (Yes, it can happen, and often does. Anti-virus software isn't foolproof, and you may not even know you have the virus.) You could be unknowingly propogating viruses with every HTML email you send.
Did you know that HTML email can connect to the internet by itself? I don't mean you'll see your browser open and a web page will come up. I mean in the background, without you even knowing it, scripts and code could be running which are "silently" sending information over the internet from your computer (or your recipient's) to other third party computers, who then use your information to spam you and your email recipients. These scripts could also be automatically distributing viruses to everyone in your address book or those email addresses unfortunate enough to be included in the bodies of emails in your inbox. All this behind the scenes, and you'd have absolutely no idea. Neither would the person you've sent the HTML email to.
Did you know that HTML email is over twice the size of a text only email? Two copies of the email are generated and sent - one text version and one HTML version. This doubles bandwidth use which, in mass quantities, slows down the Internet.
Did you know that not everyone can (or wants to) see formatting in their emails? Several email programs can view text only, which means if you send the word Hello in bolded purple, they don't see the bolded purple, they see this: <font size="+1" color="#992299"><b>Hello</b></font>. It's pretty aggravating to have to try to read your message within a whole page of that coding.
Others have the option to turn off their formatted view. This means that they won't have to weed through all the coding, but the HTML version is still transmitted with the email, wasting bandwidth. So, it's a good idea not to rely on formatting to get your point across. Some people may not see what you've intended them to. | Hint: Not only do I recommend not sending HTML emails, but as an added security measure for your computer I recommend using an email program in which you can turn formatting off for your incoming email as well. |
Signatures:
A signature is a great idea to include in email, especially for business. It's a courteous way to help your recipients find your information easily. However, keep the signature to no more than 3-5 text lines, and don't use images in the signature. Some people may not be able to see them, and it's a waste of bandwidth.
Capitalization:
When writing emails, don't type in ALL CAPS. It is difficult to read, and can be misconstrued as offensive since it's considered shouting. On the other hand, don't type without caps either. Run on sentences without capitalization or proper punctuation are just as annoying and hard to read.
Emoticons and icons:
Emoticons (those cute little faces) and other icons in email are fun and can be helpful in making a point, but don't overuse them. Not everyone thinks they're cute, and in high doses can be pretty high on the annoying scale.
Sending to Multiple Addresses:
When sending email to multiple email addresses, don't include all addresses in the To: line. For that matter, don't use the CC: line either. Both of these options will make every one of those email addresses visible to each of the people you've sent the email to. This is a very bad thing for two reasons: 1) This is an invasion of privacy, since you likely didn't check with each one of your recipients to make sure they're okay with their contact information being distributed to strangers; and 2) It poses a great big security risk.
Many viruses out there are set up to automatically grab email addresses from your address book and from the headers of all your incoming and outgoing email. This means that you are exposing each email recipient in your To: and CC: lines to any viruses on your computer and all the computers of those you've sent the email to.
Viruses can also harvest email addresses from the body of your email. Before sending email, especially those you're forwarding, make sure you remove any email addresseses from the body of your email.
"But my computer doesn't have any viruses!", you say. Fair enough. But it doesn't stop at your computer. Let's say you send an email out to five people. You don't have a virus on your computer, but those five emails went out to five different computers where viruses may be lurking, silently collecting email addresses.
Now, let's say those five computers in turn forward your email to five of each of their friends, with the original email addresses plus five new ones included. This means that ten email addresses are now going out to twenty five computers - that's two hundred and fifty email messages that could be exposed to viruses. Can you see where I'm going with this? You innocently sent the original email without realizing how much you're exposing other people's email addresses to risk.
There is an extremely easy way to get around this problem. It's so simple, and you can easily get in the habit of doing it right away! The secret: Use the Bcc: line. It will send the email to everyone as usual, but will not show other email addresses to any of the recipients. They will see only your email address and their own.
Replying to email:
Including the original message in your reply is a good thing, because your recipient doesn't always remember or hasn't kept a copy of what they originally wrote. However, it is not necessary, and is actually a huge waste of bandwidth, to include the entire message with full headers and signature lines and anything else that isn't pertinent to the subject of the email. Once you press reply, you can edit the original email to include just a few important lines, then add your reply just above or below as needed.
This becomes especially important when you've sent replies back and forth a few times and you have a long list of previous emails tacked on to the bottom of your reply. It's unnecessary, and is a waste of bandwidth. It also adds to download time for those on dialup.
Forwarding email:
What gets my goat in forwarded emails is when each line begins with seventeen >'s and you have to search for the randomly scattered, almost unreadable words throughout them. When forwarding email, unless there is a logical reason for them, for goodness sake do everyone a favour and delete the >'s! I love jokes, but they're no fun when I have to work so hard at reading them.
Another major issue with forwarded email is when the headers are left in the body of the email. As already mentioned, viruses often are set up to grab email addresses from the body of incoming and outgoing emails. Especially with forwarded jokes, the person who sent them to you were just trying to brighten your day, and in return you are inadvertently increasing their chances of getting a virus, not to mention sending out their email address to strangers without their consent! Delete headers out of the body of your email before forwarding.
Hoaxes:
This brings me to my number one peeve when it comes to forwarded emails: virus (and other) hoaxes! Now, there are a lot of viruses out there, and warning each other by email is a noble and courteous thing to do. However, it is only noble and courteous when the information in them is legitimate. Otherwise, these warnings are a waste of time, bandwidth, and contribute to ignorance, not education.
One of the common red flags of internet hoaxes are that they claim to come from a "reliable source". Before you send out an email to your entire address book, no matter how reliable you think your source is, please take these two steps to verify that the warning is authentic:
Step 1: Check one of these, or any other legitimate anti-virus websites:
Symantec: http://www.sarc.com/avcenter/hoax.html
McAfee: http://vil.mcafee.com/hoax.asp
Step 2: For all other types of warnings, verify at this site:
Snopes Urban Legend Reference: http://www.snopes.com
Online urban legend hoaxes are emails that contain untrue or partially true information, but don't necessarily contain a virus. Unfortunately, people assume they're true and don't investigate before sending. Have a look at just this one page, http://snopes.com/info/topsearches.asp, to see a small selection of internet urban legends. You'll likely see more than a few that have crossed your email inbox at least once!
Please, do yourself and everyone in your email addressbook a favour and bookmark or add the websites above to your Favourites right now. Each time you get a warning, just visit the websites and see how legitimate it really is. It takes so little time to check, and will save a heap of bandwidth, download time and problems in the long run. Why not help make Internet surfing easier and more fun for yourself and everyone?
The importance of email etiquette is to maintain common sense in communication between one another, to improve the overall speed and accessiblity of the Internet, and to create a collective environment of increased security online. Wouldn't you rather have less problems on your own computer?
Each of us taking responsibility for ourselves and making educated decisions when sending email is a step towards more effective email communication.
© 2004 Renée Deakin. All rights reserved. Copying of this article in any form by any means, mechanical or electric, is strictly prohibited without express permission from Earth Spirit Creations. You may link back to this webpage, as long as full credit is given to author. Contact us for more information.