important email rules

Top 26 Most Important Rules of Email Etiquette
By Heinz Tschabitscher, About.com Guide



The rules of email etiquette are not "rules" in the sense that I will come after you if you don't follow them. They are guidelines that help avoid mistakes (like offending someone when you don't mean to) and misunderstandings (like being offended when you're not meant to). These core rules of email etiquette help us communicate better via email.

1. Take Another Look Before You Send a Message - Don't send anything you don't want to send.

2. Do Not Default to "Reply All" - "Reply" is good. "Reply to All" is better. Right?

3. Keep Emails Short - Do not intimidate recipients with too much text.

4. Properly Format Your Email Replies, and Be Lazy - Do you think quoting original text in your email replies perfectly is a lot of work? Don't let the '>' intimidate you!

5. Write Perfect Subject Lines - Do you make these mistakes in your email subjects? (The key to getting your messages read is not to be clever.)

6. Clean Up Emails Before Forwarding Them - Forwarding emails is a great way of sharing ideas, but make sure the original idea is not hidden in obfuscation.

7. When in Doubt, Send Plain Text Email, Not HTML - Not everybody can receive your fancily formatted emails. Some may even react furious. To be safe rather than sorry, send plain text emails only when in doubt.

8. Don't Forward Hoaxes - Email hoaxes often contain stories that are intriguing, and sure to irritate. Here's how to spot and stop urban legends.

9. Use Current Antivirus Software, Keep it Up to Date, Scan for Free
Make sure you're not spreading worms and viruses via email or act as a vehicle for spreading spam. All this can be caused by malicious emails. Fortunately, there's protection.

10. Say Why You Think What You Forward Will Interest the Recipient
More and better communication makes better relationships.

11. Do Let People Know Their Mail Has Been Received - Did the spam filter eat my message? Spare others this nagging question and let them know you got their email.

12. Ask Before You Send Huge Attachments - Don't clog email systems without permission.

13. Talk About One Subject per Email Message Only - Help make the world less confusing. Try to talk about one subject per message only. For another subject, start a new email.

14. Punctuation Matters; in Emails Too - Comma, colon, hyphen and semicolon — all exist for a reason: they make it easier to understand the intended meaning of a sentence. Don't make life more difficult and possibly less interesting for the recipients of your emails. Pay some — though not too pedantically much — attention to punctuation.

15. Use Acronyms Sparingly - DYK? Not everybody knows every acronym, and they don't save that much time anyway.

16. Resize Pictures to Handy Proportions Before Inserting Them in Emails
When your photos look good in your email, you look good, too!

17. Writing in All Caps is Like Shouting - Don't shout in your emails (and all caps is so difficult to read).

18. Be Careful with Irony in Emails - No, really! I mean it. Honestly!

19. Catch Typos by Printing Your Emails - You can often find typos or misplaced commas neither your spell checker nor you yourself catch when proofreading on the screen.

20. How to Avoid Embarrassing Emails - Avoid embarrassing emails by sending them to yourself only (by default).

21. Set Your System Clock Right - Make sure you don't send messages from 1981.

22. In Doubt, End Emails with "Thanks" - If you don't know how to say good-bye at the end of an email, there's one thing that will almost always be appropriate. Thanks.

23. Where to Put Your Signature - Without a line sub-scripted "sign here", how do you decide where to place your email signature?

24. Wondering "How to Put That in Writing", Write "That" -
Tell it like it is. Have you noticed how people who you understand perfectly well when you listen to them become cryptic when they start writing?

25. Why You Should Compress Files Before Sending Them via Email -
Smaller is more beautiful, at least when it comes to email attachments. So make files smaller before your send them via email.

26. Avoid "Me Too" Messages -
"Me too" is not enough content, but too much annoyance.

MY THOUGHTS

some of the tips here i do not understand.some, in my opinion, are too much.  why not a "me, too" if that's what you mean and that's the only message you want to convey?  i'd like to subscribe to cleaning mails before forwarding.  i just hate scrolling and scrolling and scrolling down thousands of email addresses before getting to the message.  and guess what, i never thought it necessary to ask permission first before sending a large file.  i would certainly appreciate that.