E-Mail Etiquette

I will Follow… has a really good guideline on E-Mail Usage and Etiquette. You may know some of the key points in there, but some tips may be the wake up call for you on how to use email properly. It has contents about how to use to, cc, bcc fields, how to format your email, and so on. In relation to time, the author also talks the natural of email responses - Email is not an interaction communication tool and you cannot expect to have your reply quickly. This is one of the trade-off to avoid interruption to others and help people to concentrate their work:

… 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 …

Here are the overall topics:

• To, Cc and Bcc
• Reply To All
• Don’t Be A Novelist
• Too Much Punctuation!!!
• Formatting Is Not Everything
• Abbreviations
• Smilies
• Salutations
• Signatures
• Attachments
• vCards
• Threads
• Quotes
• Save A Tree
• Privacy, Are You Kidding?
• If You Send It From the Office, It Comes From The Office
• Flames
• Better Than Snail Mail
• A Blessing And A Curse

E-Mail Etiquette