FREE ESSAY ON E-MAIL ETIQUETTE

E-MAIL ETIQUETTE

E-Mail Etiquette 
Introduction
This document is intended to offer guidance to users of electronic mail (e-mail) systems,
whether it's a twelve-year old computer nerd's BBS, one of the dinosaur services like
AOL-ful, Compu-Snore or Prodigee-wiz, or the vast world of the Internet. Although it's
geared towards users of the afore-mentioned services, it has sections that apply to all
types of e-mail systems. 
This is not a how-to document, but rather a document that offers advice to make you more
computer-worthy (probably more worthy than you desire) and to prevent you from
embarrassing yourself at some point in the near future. 
Inspiration for this document and for the tables in the Abbreviation and Smilies sections
must go to Ventanna Press for their publication the Windows Internet Tour Guide. 
Don't Be A Novelist
Messages should be concise and to the point. Think of it as a telephone conversation,
except you are typing instead of speaking. Nobody has ever won a Pulitzer Prize for a
telephone conversation nor will they win one for an e-mail message. 
Its also important to remember that some people receive hundreds of e-mail messages a day
(yes, there are such people), so the last thing they want to see is a message from
someone who thinks he/she is the next Dickens. 
Too Much Punctuation!!!
Don't get caught up in grammar and punctuation, especially excessive punctuation. You'll
see lots of e-mail messages where people put a dozen exclamation points at the end of a
sentence for added emphasis. Big deal. Exclamation points (called bangs in computer
circles) are just another form of ending a sentence. 
If something is important it should be reflected in your text, not in your punctuation. 
The Legacy Of Punch Cards
Although this is the 1990's, not everyone in the world has e-mail software that has the
word wrap feature (word wrap keeps you from having to hit the Enter key at the end of the
line). There are still a large number of users with dumb (and not so dumb) terminals and
teletype devices that do not gracefully handle text longer than the old punch card length
of 80 characters. Therefore, keep the number of characters per line below the 80
character limit. Some recent e-mail packages have a built-in feature that automatically
word wraps at a specified character limit so that the problem is essentially solved.
However, if you're software does not support this feature, you'll just have to remember
to use the big Enter key again. 
Formatting Is Not Everything
Formatting can be everything, but not here. Plain text is it. Period. End of sentence. 
Using HTML, or heaven forbid the Microsquish Rich Text Format, to format messages so that
they have fancy fonts, colors or whatever is asking for trouble. There are lots of e-mail
clients (and some servers) which can not handle messages in these formats. The message
will come in as utter gibberish or in the worst case, crash the e-mail client. I've seen
it happen. 
Abbreviations
Abbreviation usage is quite rampant with e-mail. In the quest to save keystrokes, users
have traded clarity for confusion (unless you understand the abbreviations). Some of the
more common abbreviations are listed in the table below. I would recommend that you use
abbreviations that are already common to the English language, such as FYI and BTW.
Beyond that, you run the risk of confusing your recipient. 
This Means This
BCNU be seeing you
BTW by the way
FWIW for what it's worth
FYI for your information
IMHO in my humble opinion
OBO or best offer
ROTFL rolling on the floor laughing
RTFM read the funny manual
TNSTAAFL there's no such thing as a free lunch
TTFN ta ta for now
TTYL talk to you later
Smilies
Part of the nature of a good one-on-one conversation is the use of visual cues. How
important are facial expressions and body gestures to a conversation? A simple eye
movement can mean the difference between yes and YES. What about auditory cues? The
results are the same. 
Since there are no visual or auditory cues with e-mail, users have come up with something
called smilies. They are simple strings of characters that are interspersed in the e-mail
text to convey the writer's emotions (cues). The most common example is :-). Turn your
head to the left and you should see a happy face (the colon are the eyes, the dash is the
nose and the parentheses is the mouth). Here are some more examples. 
This Means This
:-) Smiley face
;-) Wink (light sarcasm)
:-| Indifference
:-* Devilish grin (heavy sarcasm)
8-) Eye-glasses
:-D Shock or surprise
:-/ Perplexed
:-( Frown (anger or displeasure)
:-P Wry smile
;-} Leer
:-Q Smoker
:-e Disappointment
:-@ Scream
:-O Yell
:-* Drunk
:-{} Wears lipstick
:- Male
*- Female
Please don't ask me to interpret, because I don't understand them all. 
They are typically found at the end of sentences and will usually refer back to the prior
statement. 
I would recommend you use these sparingly. There are hundreds of these things and their
translations are by no means universal (a miss-interpreted smilie could lead to a flame).

Salutations
If you posed this question to Miss Manners, I expect she would come back with a quick
answer - use the standard formalities -- but I don't know that I would agree. 
In a non-business situation, I would recommend that you bypass the standard formalities.
At most, I would only include something along the lines of Dear Virgil or just Virgil. 
In the business situation, things are much more complicated. Each situation will need to
be evaluated on its on, but in general, I would use the following as a guide: If you
normally address a person as Miss/Mrs./Ms./Mr. Smith then that's the way I would
initially address them in e-mail. If you normally call them by their first name then I
would either omit the salutation or follow the guideline specified in the prior
paragraph. If you are unsure, stick to the formal salutation. It's the safest bet. 
Signatures
If you had to guess what a signature was (the e-mail version), you would probably be
close. 
On a paper document (save a tree, send e-mail) it's typical to close the document with
the following: 
Gene Wicker, Jr.
I Will Follow... Services
Since it's not possible (yet) to sign your e-mail, users will sometimes include the same
information (minus the signature) at the bottom of their e-mail messages. 
I would highly recommend this practice because the originator is not always clear to the
recipient. Lots of companies use abbreviated names or numbers for employee e-mail
addresses and those abbreviations or numbers will mean little to someone not familiar
with their significance. 
I would also recommend that you included your e-mail address in this information.
Sometimes it can be very difficult to locate your e-mail address in the information
that's a part of transmission, especially if it's going across the Internet. 
If your e-mail address is a business address, I would include your title and company name
in the signature. Normally, this might be part of a letterhead, but in the e-mail world
letterheads are not used (wasted space). 
You will sometimes run across a user's signature that contains a quote (as in ...the
secret to life is that there is no secret.) after the person's name. This has become a
fairly common practice. If you choose this option I would recommend that the quote be
something that is a reflection of yourself. Keep it short. You don't want the quote to be
longer than the message. 
Also you will run across signatures that contain images built out of keyboard characters.
These are kind of hard to describe unless you've seen one, but you will surely know one
when you see it. As with the quote, the image should be a reflection of the person. 
Whether you choose to add a quote, an image or both, I would recommend that you keep the
total number of lines for the signature down to four or less. 
Threads
Once you send that first e-mail, you will probably get a response. If you want to reply
to that response what should you do? The wrong thing to do is to start a new e-mail
message. This breaks the link (called a thread) between the original message and your
soon-to-be-created response. Without the link, it can get difficult for the users on each
end to follow the sequence of messages, especially after several exchanges. This becomes
an even larger problem when you are dealing with newsgroups (more later) where several
people may be replying to messages and trying to follow the thread of exchanged
information. The correct thing to do is to reply, which is essentially the same thing as
creating a new message, but maintains the thread. 
Quotes
Nothing is more wasteful than to reply to an e-mail by including a complete copy of the
original with the words I agree , Okay or Ditto at the bottom. 
The correct method is to use quoting. This is best explained by an example: 
*and do you agree with the proposal to hire Ms. Ross to 
*handle our legal services?
Yes. Please make the necessary arrangements. 
The '*' in front of the text indicates to the recipient that this is quoted material from
his/her last e-mail message. The second sentence is your response to the quoted material.
The key with quoting is to include enough material in the quote so that it will be
relevant to the recipient. Imagine that the original message was a hundred lines long and
the only question that required a response was located in the last sentence. Why send the
whole message back in the reply? That would cause the recipient to scroll through the
hundred line message again just to find your response at the bottom. 
Quoting can occur again and again as in the example: 
**and do you agree with the proposal to hire Ms. Ross to 
**handle our legal services?
*
*Yes. Please make the necessary arrangements.
Arrangements made. Our first meeting is scheduled for tomorrow morning. 
From this we see both two level quoting (**) and one level quoting (*). The (**)
indicates that the sender is quoting your quote and the (*) is a quote of part of your
message you sent in reply. 
Don't get hung up in quoting. After so many levels, all you end up with is a bunch of *
and very little substance. 
Save A Tree
Sometimes I think that the best thing that could happen would be for someone to take away
the printer. Why? Every time I send an e-mail out to a large group, a third of the group
will print the message even before reading it, a third will read it and then print it,
and the last third will simply delete it. 
One of the goals for e-mail usage is to eliminate (or greatly reduce) the shuffling of
paper, but what chance does that have if a significant number of people are going to
print every message they receive. I'm not saying that all messages should not be printed.
I'm saying that too many messages are printed for no reason (a lot are printed and never
retrieved from the printer). 
Unless you have a very primitive e-mail system, it probably has some system (usually
called folders) that can be used to permanently store messages for recall at any time in
the future. If the same people who print messages for paper file systems would create the
same structure in the e-mail system with folders, it would accomplish the same goal, but
would save an enormous amount of paper (and trees). 
Privacy, Are You Kidding?
Stop right where you are and set aside a couple of brain cells for the following
statement: there is no such thing as a private e-mail. I don't care what anybody says,
states, swears or whatever, there is just no such thing as private e-mail. The reason?
Keep reading. 
With some e-mail systems, the e-mail administrator has the ability to read any and all
e-mail messages. If this is the case where you are located you better hope that there is
a honest and respectable person in that position. 
Some companies monitor employee e-mail (I consider this one of the worst forms of
censorship). The reasons for this obtrusive behavior range from company management
wanting to make sure users are not wasting time on frivolous messages to making sure that
company secrets are not being leaked to unauthorized sources. 
E-mail software is like all software in that occasionally things go wrong. If this
happens, you may end up receiving e-mail meant for another person or your e-mail may get
sent to the wrong person. Either way, what you thought was private is not private
anymore. 
Somewhere in the world there is a person (usually a hacker) who is able to read your
e-mail if he/she tries hard enough. Of course Tries hard enough is the key. It's not that
simple to read another person's e-mail (usually) . (Usually) there are security measures
in place to prevent this from happening, but no security is one hundred percent
hacker-proof. I have usually in parenthesis in the prior two sentences because I'm making
the assumption that the person/persons who install and operate your e-mail system have
taken the necessary precautions. Of course, the same must also be true for the
person/persons on the receiving end of your e-mail. 
So where does this leave us. First, let me reiterate the initial statement: there is no
such thing as a private e-mail. Got it? Second, don't send anything by e-mail that you
would not want posted on the company bulletin board. If it's safe enough for the bulletin
board, it's safe enough for e-mail. Finally, if you are debating whether or not to send
something personal by e-mail, either deliver it by hand or send it by snail mail. 
Flames
What is a flame or specifically what does it mean to be flamed? To be flamed means that
you've sent an e-mail to a person(s) that has caused that person(s) to respond in many,
not-so-nice words. It's basically a verbal attack in electronic form. I would provide
examples, but I'm not too sure of the age of my audience and I, in turn, do not want to
end up getting flamed from the readers of this document. 
Sometimes the reason for a flame is quite obvious (keep reading), but in other cases you
just never know. You might send what you think is a harmless e-mail to ten people. Nine
people respond in a rational tone while number ten sends you a flame. Just remember that
everyone sees the world differently. You may be lucky and spend your whole life dealing
only with the people in the group of nine, but I'll bet that sooner or later you will run
into person ten. 
How do you respond to flame? Tough question. The best answer would be to ignore it and go
about your life as logical and rational human being. If this is not your first reaction,
it probably will be after you've been flamed a couple dozen times. You will find out that
responses just aren't worth the effort. Remember that old saying about You can please
some of the people.... 
If you do choose to respond you will probably end up in what is known as a flame war.
This is where two or more people end up exchanging flames for an extended period of time,
usually to the point that users start making references to one's mother, one's mental
capability, etc... At some point, all those participating in the war will eventually
forget what originally started it and go back to being normal human beings. 
Never been flamed? Well if you are begging for it, I would suggest one of the following:

Send an e-mail in all UPPER-CASE. Use of upper-case words is the equivalent of shouting
in some one's ear. ONLY use upper-case words when trying to make a point (such as I just
did). Even at that, you should be careful with who you are exchanging messages. 
Make a comment about grammar or punctuation. Nobody wants to feel like they are
exchanging e-mail with their eighth-grade English teacher. 
Send a mass-mailing advertisement. This is numero uno on the don'ts list and will
generate more flames than the devil himself. 
Think about the amount of junk mail you receive everyday by snail mail. Even though you
don't want it, you find you must look through all of it because somewhere in that stack
of unwanted advertisements and wasted paper could be your monthly water bill. The same
principle applies to the e-mail. Would you want to search through a mailbox full of
advertisements simply to find that all-important message from your boss? 
Request computer help without providing system-specific information. For example, if I
submitted an e-mail that stated I've got this problem with Word.... Well is that MS Word
for DOS, MS Word for Windows, MS Word for Macs? What version? Version 2.0? Version 6.0? 
Remember, the world (and its users) is made up of every kind of computer imaginable, from
IBM PC's to Macs to UNIX workstations to the one your neighbor assembled in his garage. 
The correct method would be to list all the system specifics first, then describe the
problem or question. For example, if I were seeking answers to questions about
Microsquish Word for my computer at home, I would list Gizmo Model SR-32 (Microchannel
Clone, 486-66Mhz, 16MB RAM, 400MB SCSI hard disk), MS DOS 6.22, MS Windows 3.11, MS Word
6.0a and then state the problem in detail. 
Send a e-mail asking for the meaning of BTW or :-) . If you've not already found these in
this document, keep reading. E-mail users use lots of abbreviations (not everyone can
type 200 words a minute) and other funny characters. These are two of the more common
examples -- BTW is the equivalent of by the way and :-) is a happy face or smile (turn
your head to the left). 
Better Than Snail Mail
You would think that since e-mail is electronic and electronic information is suppose to
move at the speed of light, your e-mail message would arrive seconds after you send it.
If you're sending e-mail to the person in the office next to yours it might happen that
way. In most cases, however, the message will probably take anywhere from a couple of
minutes (majority of the time) to a couple of days (in which case there is usually a
problem). 
Think of it this way. Sending e-mail locally is as easy as delivering it by hand.
Following that premise, if you had to hand deliver mail to some one clear across the
country, doesn't that take a little more effort? 
The reason it takes longer is that in the transmission of a message from point A to point
B, the message may pass across one, two, or up to who-knows-how-many different types of
mail systems before it reaches its destination. Remember my earlier statement? All
computers (and e-mail systems) are not the same. 
No matter how far away you are sending your e-mail message I'll guarantee that it will
beat snail mail. On top of that you save the cost of a stamp. 
A Blessing And A Curse
E-mail is a conversation that does not require an immediate response (like a telephone).
If someone calls you on the telephone, you pick it up (unless you have an answering
machine, voice mail or you are just plain rude) and the conversation begins. This is an
interactive conversation. 
With e-mail you send a message and then wait for a response. The response may come in
five minutes or the response may come in five days. Either way it's not an interactive
conversation. 
If a hundred people send you e-mail in one day, so what? You didn't have to talk with all
one hundred. Just think of all the hellos, good-byes and other unnecessary chit-chat you
avoided. With e-mail you only deal with their messages (which usually omit hellos,
good-byes and such) and you deal with them on your own time. That's the blessing. 
Now for the curse. 
Too many users assume that the minute someone receives an e-mail it, the person will read
it. Bad assumption. 
If you schedule a meeting for an hour from now and send an e-mail to each attendee, the
chance that all the attendee's will read that message within the hour will be pretty
small. On the other hand, if you schedule the meeting for the next day, the chance that
they will read the message will be pretty high. Remember, e-mail is not designed for
immediacy (that's why you have a telephone), it's designed for convenience. 
Some (not all) e-mail systems have features that try to combat this problem. These
features (usually called notification) will notify you when a person has received your
e-mail and may also notify you when the person has read it (really all it can do is
assume you that the person has looked at the first screen of the message -- it has no way
to know if the person has read the message word for word). Referring back to the example
in the last paragraph, you could check to see who has checked their e-mail before the
meeting and then telephone those who have not read it. 
Newsgroups
If you have access to the Internet, you may have access to newsgroups. At the simplest
level, a newsgroup is a collection of related e-mail messages tied to a specific topic.
Some examples might be a newsgroup for users of Microsquish Word, a newsgroup for the
fans of the works of Rita Mae Brown or a newsgroup for owners of handmade bicycles
manufactured in Wisconsin. If you seen a list of the available newsgroups, which is now
well over the 20,000 range, the topics are quite diverse and amazing. 
Anyway, on to more important items.... 
Don't call a newsgroup a anything but a newsgroup. They are not forums (that's on
Compu-Snore). They definitely are not BBS's. They are newsgroups. Nothing more. Nothing
less. 
Before posting (think of it as sending an e-mail message) to a newsgroup, I would highly
recommend that 1) you monitor it for a few days (called lurking) to make sure the
newsgroup's content is relevant to your interest, and 2) read the Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQ) section if there is one. FAQs usually will provide a statement of
direction for the newsgroup along with any other guidelines for its usage. Following
these two tenets will help you avoid that dreaded flame. 
If you find that you want to post an entry to a newsgroup, make sure it's the right
group. Posting a message for help for Microsquish Word in the WordImperfect newsgroup
won't get you anywhere other than a possible flame (there's that word again). 
One last no-no for news groups is called spamming. Spamming is repeated posting the same
message to a particular news group(s) for no other reason than to be obnoxious. This is
definite flame bait.