Apropos
The new way we communicate still has a few rules that keep the Ms. Manners among us content. It's critical to have good email etiquette to promote online productivity and smooth communication. Personal styles differ, but there are some general rules that apply in most situations.

Business Communication
Generally, business email should mirror business correspondence in style, correctness and formality. Use a salutation or greeting, with the recipient's title (Mr., Ms., Dr.), as you would in a formal business letter. Use the party's first name if you would normally write to that person on a first name basis. Otherwise, use the last name.

Yada yada yada
Messages should be concise and to the point. The goal is brief, effective communication that doesn't waste the recipient's time (some people receive hundreds of email messages a day!).

Too Much Punctuation…
Don't get caught up in punctuation, especially excessive punctuation. You'll see lots of email messages where people put a dozen exclamation points at the end of a sentence for added emphasis. Why????? If something is important it should be reflected in your text, not in your punctuation.

Let's (W)rap
Keep the number of characters per line below 80 characters since some devices don't handle longer text well and don't have word wrap. Some recent email packages have a built-in feature that automatically word-wraps at a specified character limit so that the problem is essentially solved, but if your software does not support this feature, you'll need to remember to use the Enter key.

Formatting Is Not the Goal
Plain text is it. Period. Trying to include fancy fonts only creates problems. There are lots of email clients (and some servers) that can't handle messages in these formats. The message will come in as utter gibberish and may even crash the email client. So generally, your goal is communication rather than style. However, if you know your recipient's email client has HTML capabilities, you can be as fancy as you want (especially with marketing materials). If you're trying to grow your business, it's best to be up with the latest technology; send text email to people who receive text, AOL to people with AOL, and HTML to people who can receive HTML.

Abbreviations
Abbreviation usage is quite rampant with email. In the quest to save keystrokes, users have often traded clarity for confusion. We recommend using only abbreviations that are already common to the English language, such as FYI and BTW. Beyond that, you run the risk of confusing your recipient.

Since there are no visual or auditory cues with email, users have come up with something called "smilies" or "emoticons." They are simple strings of characters that are interspersed in the email 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). A wink is ;-). Neutral or indifferent is :-|. Puzzled is :-/. A scream is :-0. There are others, but you get the idea. They are typically found at the end of sentences and will usually refer back to the prior statement. These should be used sparingly and are not appropriate for formal business correspondence.

Signatures
In a letter or other paper document, it's typical to close with a name, title, organization and room for a signature. Since we don't yet sign emails (but will soon, especially with the official approval of digital signature legal standing), senders often include name, title and organization but leave no signature space. It's also polite to include your contact information beneath the name of the organization. Signature files can also be an effective means to get a quick offer in to your correspondence (see Call to Action).

Keep Threads Connected
Once you send that first email, you will probably get a response. If you want to reply to that response, the inappropriate thing to do is to start a new email message. This breaks the link (called a "thread") between the original message and your soon-to-be-created response. Without the link, it can be 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 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 email by including a complete copy of the original with the words "I agree" or "Ditto" at the bottom. What's the point? The efficient method of replying is to use quoting. Example:

     >and do you agree with the proposal to hire Bill Clinton 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 email 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 and to leave out the other (50? 100?) lines that aren't relevant to your response.

(Lack of) Privacy
Remember: Although efforts might be made by some organizations to respect email privacy, generally it is not a private medium. Email can be monitored and read in a variety of contexts, and you may also accidentally send or receive an email meant for someone else. In addition, hackers can access your email if they try hard enough. No security measures are completely effective, so it's best to bear in mind the potentially public nature of the correspondence you create on email. Ask around at the office and everyone will have a story about an embarrassing correspondence made public because of that easy "send" button!

Flames
To be "flamed" means that you've sent an email to a person that has caused him or her to respond with angry words. It's basically a verbal attack in electronic form. In the email arena, you can never predict what effect your words will have on the recipient, and the lack of verbal cues (tone, sighs, pauses) easily leads to misunderstanding. The best response to being flamed is no response; otherwise the flaming continues and escalates (just like a real fire!).

What about Spam?
Spam is the pariah of electronic marketing - thus permission marketing is gaining in popularity. It is definitely going to put you in the Email Etiquette Dunce Corner if your message can be perceived as spam. One solution is to create a permission-based campaign that gives consumers control over whether to receive your materials or not while you demonstrate your respect for their privacy. For correspondence that is in the gray area between spam and non-spam (such as initial contact campaigns), you should include a disclaimer that provides opt-out and acknowledges your desire to be spam-free at the same time. For example, if you're sending an initial contact campaign to a newsgroup, you could include the following in your post: "If you think that this is not appropriate for this newsgroup, please send notification to the email address whoever@wherever.com."

 

Email Basics

Email Glossary of Terms

Email Etiquette

Email Permission: Ask First