Email is perfect for sending attachments and confirming something important, like an agreed rendezvous time, the minutes from a meeting and whether the check's in the mail. It's absolutely horrible for explaining why you may have publicly embarrassed a colleague, how your boss is doing a poor job and why you haven't called a loved one in three weeks. The beauty of email is that it's quick, cheap and black and white. It's perfect for fast, simple messaging but poorly suited (at least for in its current form) for nuance, poetry and complexity. With that in mind, let's examine email etiquette:
- Use the Subject line wisely. For example, instead of a generic subject line like 'Meeting', why not put something like "Board Meeting 3pm Tuesday @ S King Office"? One glance at the subject line and both the recipient and the sender have a clear idea of the email's contents.
- Don't promote spam. Forwarding interesting video clips, fun jokes, and cute pics is great, but do it using the BCC field. In other words, send it from you to you but include all the recipient's email addresses in the BCC field. This will help prevent email harvesting, a tactic commonly used to pack one's email address book.
- Make it easy to read. This is especially true if the email is business related. No one has time for excruciating long messages with thick paragraphs and never-ending pages. Clear and concise is best.
- Leave a good impression. Too often we're in such a hurry when composing email we frequently neglect to just stop and think. Before hitting the send button, take a moment and ask a few important questions: Do I need to spell-check it? how's my grammar? Is the tone positive?
Remember, computing can give us a false sense of privacy. This is especially true when we are locked up in our office somewhere with no one standing over our shoulders. However, email is essentially public. Whatever you send will pass through several computers before reaching its final destination and even then there are no assurances it won't be forwarded on to some other place. So be careful what you write. It just may come back top haunt you.
For more tips on email etiquette, take a look at these sites:
www.EmailReplies.com www.iWillFollow.com www.LearnTheNet.com. Call or email me if I can help with anything.
James Kerr is President/CEO of SuperGeeks, a Hawaii-based computer service and repair company (
www.supergeeks.net). Send questions, comments and suggestions to
help@supergeeks.net or call 942-0773.
