Email Etiquette

{Extracted from: Making E-Mail More Productive, by M. Grey, GartnerAdvisory, Gartner Group, 12 January 2001}.

• Put the due date and to whom the response is to be delivered in the first line of the e-mail so it can easily be copied to a calendar
• Resist replying to all recipients in a distribution list unless the sender specifically asked for it
• Make the subject line meaningful so the receiver can easily determine the message content
• Do not send cut-and-paste articles from the Internet — send the link instead
• Do not fragment a distribution list — this is how multiple e-mail threads on the same subject start
• Compress all attachments
• Use a signature file with pertinent information
• Spell check the e-mail
• For simple replies, write the text in the subject line with zero content in the body — e.g., "Meeting confirmed for 3 p.m., no text follows"
• Use collaboration tools for collaborative work — do not use e-mail
• Encourage forwarding of resource commitment requests to managers rather than subordinates; this ensures more valid commitments and less stress for employees
• Write concisely
• Do not use slang or idioms that could be misunderstood outside of the sender's region or country
• Use short paragraphs
• Separate ideas with bullets
• Be careful when typing in capital letters, as all-capitalized words and sentences in e-mails are often interpreted as yelling
• Never send e-mail when angry. Instead, type it, then save it to a folder. After you are calm, reread and edit it, then send.
• Keep e-mails constructive in substance and professional in tone
• Treat people with the same courtesy and respect in e-mail as you would face-to-face
• Do not use e-mail as a replacement for face-to-face conversation
• Write in a factual style, avoiding verbiage that can be misconstrued. E-mail is one-directional — i.e., the recipient cannot hear the sender's intonation. Conversely, the sender cannot see the reader's facial expressions as the message is being read.
• Guard against sending e-mail that can be taken out of context or that contains confidential or internal information. E-mail is easily forwarded and copied — once it is sent, an e-mail can take on a "life of its own."
• Do not send messages with blank subject lines. Messages with no subject are likely to be treated as junk mail.
• Proofread the distribution list carefully before sending the e-mail
• Avoid performing a "Reply All" to messages — most people do not need to have a copy of every reply to every iteration of the same message.
• Consider that external recipients may be part of the distribution list
• Delete and do not forward "spam," jokes and chain letters
• Limit large or multiple file and graphics attachments — where attachments are necessary, compress them before sending

Similarly, the receiver should practice good e-mail productivity techniques, such as:

• Handle each e-mail message only once — i.e., once opened, read, delete or file it
• Sort e-mails by topics and move them into appropriate personal folders. Those that do not correspond to any topic should be sorted by date and the rest deleted. It takes longer to sort e-mails at the beginning, but saves time in the long term.
• Use a sacrificial e-mail account (e.g., with Microsoft Network) for all Web sites or newsgroups that require an e-mail address but will lead only to spam
• Subscribe only to relevant news lists
• Delete all spam first to reduce clutter
• Use junk mail filters where provided by the e-mail client
• Use rules to automatically file mail into folders by category
• Where e-mail is received over a wireless device, filter by sender and by line number. On phones and pagers, 10 lines to 15 lines may be the maximum length; on personal digital assistants (PDAs), larger e-mails of up to 25 lines may be easily read (see Research Note COM-12-2000).

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Fri Jul 6 16:17:05 EDT 2001
http://www.cs.wpi.edu/~dcb/email-etiquette.html