Tips On Email

    by Steve LeBlanc © 2005 rev2005.11.20

Here are some tips and netiquette to make email easier for both you and your readers.

  1. No Hyphen in email: See Donald Knuth and this post and Tomlinson, the father of email.
  2. EASY ON CAPITALS: Use caps sparingly in email, especially on a forum (bulletin board). Caps means you are SCREAMING. Some people get offended by this.
  3. not just lower case: Be sure to use mixed case, with appropriate capitalization. Why? All lower case email or posts make you look underage, lazy and not very intelligent.
  4. Never send email as HTML: especially when sending to a forum, list server or email list. It takes up bandwidth, is harder to read and clogs up servers. It also poses problems for some email clients. Tools / Options / Send tab and change Mail Sending Format from HTML to Plain Text. You can always change it back for a single email: Format / Rich Text (HTML) in the Compose window.
  5. Proofread before Send: Before you press Send, re-read your email for typos, clarity and flavor. Does it need more words? Less? Shorter is usually better.
  6. Crop your Reply: When replying to an email, crop out all the text which is NOT relevant to your reply. Just select the part you don't want and hit DEL.
  7. Use BCC: Never put more than one name in the TO: field of an email, unless you are all close friends who have agreed to it. Better to put one in the TO: and the rest in the BCC: field (Blind Carbon Copy). That way no one else will know your name was in the list. Why? You send an email to 50 of your favorite friends, inviting them to see your new site. One of them forwards it to a someone who just happens to secretly collect names for SPAM lists. Suddenly, all fifty people start getting spam, and no one knows how. None of your friends did anything wrong, but bad Netiquette caused the problem. See this Rutgers article BCC for Privacy! where they say: Please don't put my email address in the To or CC fields of messages being sent to people I don't know! Or Google it: Please Use BCC.
  8. Use Lists: When sending to more than 10-20 names, use a FREE mailing list, such as Yahoo groups at groups.yahoo.com. ListBot.com went to M$. I like www.NotifyList.com. These lists keep names reasonably private. And they empower people to add or remove themselves, anytime they want. Less fear of offending you when leaving list.
  9. Use Descriptive Subject: Make your Subject line descriptive, with 2-8 words. Unless it's pure gossip with a close, it helps your readers enormously to know what the email is about at delete time. Hard to work through a bunch of "Hey, Look at this." or "Guess what?" It's also rude.
  10. Outline Complex Emails: When sending a complex email, especially those that request action or information, you want to make it as easy as possible to read and respond to. Put each action item and each question on a seperate line. Seperate them with double space and place some sort of bullet in front, like: ~~ or * or even Question: Much like this list of tips.
  11. No Rhetoricals: Rhetorical questions are those which don't require or even desire an answer. I mean, "What's the point?" The answer is implied in your tone of voice. The problem is your reader cannot tell if you want an answer or not. Rhetoricals betray weak language skills, even in person. Avoid them.
  12. Do not forward Vanity Spam: Those are the ones that say to mail it to everyone you know. Always ask permission to forward any humor, inspirationals and warnings. Most warnings are hoaxes. Unsure if something is a hoax, surf to: www.breakthechain.org/ www.nonprofit.net/hoax/ However, there is one misquote: "You can't get a virus just by reading an e-mail." This is simply not true. Some have VBScript viruses.
  13. You need a good antivirus: Some great free ones are: AVG 6.0 Anti-Virus by www.grisoft.com/ and AntiVir and DOS version of F-Secure Only the DOS version of F-Secure Anti-Virus is free. Formerly F-prot. Fits on two floppies, but requires DOS skills.
  14. Spam Catcher Account: Have a second and third email address to catch spam and those sites that require that you register with a valid email. You can get your password there and delete the rest of the junk. Never give out your personal email address to sites. per Mike's List. I like www.yahoo.com and mailshell.com for email. Note: Some people will not take you seriously with a Yahoo or Hotmail address.
  15. Get a New Address: Most ISP's will give you several email addresses. As a LAST resort, if one account has become spam full, get a new one and tell all your friends of your new address. Better yet, get 3 now, and you can change as inspired.
  16. Use Disposable Anonymous email: mailinator.com/ or others www.tipmonkies.com/2005/10/04/disposable-e-mail-address-services from www.tipmonkies.com/ a cool tip site.
  17. Give them their address: Whenever a site requests your email, try to write in their own address, such as support@theirsite.com. Sometimes that will get you in as long as it looks like a valid email address. But do NOT just make one up, or some poor slob will get your email. Unless you need a password, don't give people your email address just because they asked for it. Especially if they are sending you something by snail mail. Most of the places that require passwords have competitors that do NOT have such a requirement. So look around before you give it out.
  18. Cheat: bugmenot.com offers login names and pw for many free info sites requiring that you login.
  19. Create Form Letters: For canned messages, you might create standard form letters. These are called Stationary in OE.

Misc Tips

Glossary