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11 May 2010
The following is an email etiquette or netiquette primer. It is designed to point out some of the more glaring email etiquette faux pas and help you (or your friends and acquaintances) avoid them.
What is email etiquette? We’ve all received an email message, at one point or another, that has been forwarded umpteen times and still carries the email addresses and names of prior recipients. In excessive cases, you may have to scroll through twenty or so email message headers before making your way to a lame chain letter pitch or even lamer joke.
OK! Maybe the joke wasn’t that lame and you find yourself edging your mouse towards the “Forward” button to share the levity with your entire Contacts list – STOP! Drop that mouse and pay attention! Netiquette, or email etiquette, is a set of unwritten rules that ensure courtesy, safety and professionalism in email correspondence. Here are some of the more important email etiquette considerations.
In the picture below, we find a blatant lack of email etiquette. This message landed in my Inbox a few months ago. Normally, I simply ignore ANY message that is preceded by the letters “Fw” or “Fwd” more than once, especially with a title like “Fwd: FW: PLLLLEEEAAASSSSEEE REEEAAADDD! IT WAS ON GOOD MORNING AMERICA TODAY! ...”. Oh my God! Really? Good Morning America? With so many repeated letters in the words “please” and “read” – how could I refuse?
What we have here is a blatant email etiquette infraction. Forwarding a message about making money to as many people in your contact list as possible is a major faux pas. People trust you with their email address. They trust you will use it to pass on important information or communicate. I’ve masked names and email addresses to protect the ignorant. Here we find 3 email etiquette infractions, committed not once…but 21 times. I copied and pasted the entire message into MS Word to snap this lovely reference picture. Consider that each rectangle represents 1 page of text. I ended up with a total of 18 pages. The actual message body was only 2 pages long.
So let’s analyze what’s wrong here…
Email etiquette infraction #1: stop forwarding garbage emails to your friends and coworkers. I would say that nobody cares, but I would be wrong (judging by how many times this particular message was forwarded before it died in my inbox). Fact remains, no matter how clever the joke or how “real” the possibility your fate may hinge on the successful delivery of this particular message – it’s garbage and it's annoying. 10 of your friends may consider it the highlight of their day. The other 90 are thinking they may just block your email address. Email etiquette states that you be considerate when forwarding "fluffy" messages. Be selective and avoid sending to everyone in your contact list.
Email etiquette infraction #2: if you absolutely MUST forward a forwarded message, out of courtesy, if not for security reasons, please take the time to delete prior message headers. I mention security because if you think about it – I have a message here with nearly 100 email addresses (and names). I know who your friends are. I can use these addresses to spam, stalk or harass (or worse) any of these people. Some of the people on this list may not be too happy about your lack of respect for their privacy. I wouldn’t! I entrust you with my email address and you send it along without a thought to where (or in whose inbox) it will end up. Email etiquette states that after you click the “Forward” button but before you click “Send”…take a second and select all the text that isn’t part of the “message” and press “Delete”. Yep! It really is THAT EASY!
Email etiquette infraction #3: You are a big person. While you may not understand, or need to, the intricate inner workings of email, you should have enough respect for the technology to learn the basics. When sending a message to multiple recipients, DO NOT enter all of their email addresses in the “To:” field unless you are aware that each recipient’s address and name will be visible to every other recipient and you are comfortable with that. Email etiquette dictates that the “To:” field is generally used for a single recipient. For multiple recipients, we either use CC or BCC!
“CC? BCC? I don’t see those anywhere!”…Look around your message header! They’re there!
“But what is CC? What is BCC?”
CC means “carbon copy”. You use this field when you “absolutely” want ALL recipients to know who else this message was sent to. For example, I would use CC to send a letter to my insurance company AND lawyer – so they know the other received the same letter. You can put as many addresses as needed in this field!
BCC means “blind carbon copy”. You use this field when you want ALL recipient addresses to remain private and concealed from others. You can add as many addresses as necessary here as well. This is the one you should be using when forwarding messages to a whole bunch of people.
There you have it! Hopefully this helps curb poor email etiquette! If you have friends who need to read this, please send them this page by using the “email” button next to the title of this article.
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