How many times per day do you check your e-mail? Once? Twice? It may be closer to five or ten times per day, or even more if you have a cell phone linked to your e-mail account. These days, sending and receiving e-mail has become as common as answering the telephone. Unlike the telephone, e-mail has made it faster and more convenient to speak to a number of people worldwide. E-mail is instant delivery of your message to a friend or family member. However, there is one important thing to keep in mind: once the e-mail has been sent off into cyberspace, it usually cannot be unsent.
Just as there are rules of etiquette for using the telephone, there are rules of e-mail etiquette that you need to remember. So how can you decide if you are using proper etiquette in your e-mails? Look at the list below and take note of some tips that you think will be most useful to you.
1. Read and reply to your personal e-mail as soon as possible. The e-mail might contain a request, an invitation, or a question about something important. It shows that you value the sender's time simply by sending a brief reply that answers the request or question first.
2. Try not to use ALL CAPS or multiple question or exclamation marks!!! Would you listen to someone if they were shouting at you??? That is what it seems like if you use all capital letters or multiple question or exclamation marks in your e-mail. There are very few situations where you would need to to do this, unless the situation you need to describe is urgent. 3. Do not forward unnecessary e-mails. Sending jokes, chain e-mails, and other e-mail forwards just clogs up your friend's inbox. In addition, it may pass on a malicious virus that could be embedded in the forward. If you know a great joke, tell your friend in person, or give him or her a call! 4. Be sure to check the spelling and grammar in your e-mail before sending. Grammar and spelling rules are not just for the classroom. Just think of it as a way to be clearly understood online. If you handed in a report to your teacher with misspellings, typos, and missing punctuation, you'd probably receive a poor grade. So make it a habit to make your e-mails clear and easily understood. Most e-mail programs have a spell checker, so it's very easy to click a button to check for mistakes. However, be careful about relying too heavily on spell checking programs. Sometimes they miss things. 5. Be careful using the "reply to all" button. "Reply to all" does exactly what it says: it sends a reply to all the people on the e-mail list. So in this case, you have to think carefully: Do you really need to send your reply to everyone on the list? Chances are, you do not. In many e-mail programs, the "reply" button and the "reply to all" button may be just next to each other. So be careful where you click! 6. Keep your e-mails personal, but don't write a novel. If you are writing an e-mail to Grandma, feel free to make it as long and poetic as possible. But otherwise, keep e-mails short and to the point. With homework, after-school activities, and other things keeping us busy, it's hard to spend hours online reading e-mail.
7. Make your subject line specific. The subject line of your e-mail should be related to the content of the e-mail. This gives the recipient an advance look at the e-mail itself. Think of the subject line as the main point you want to convey in your e-mail.
8. Keep your attachments to a minimum. Attachments take time to download, and they clutter inboxes.
9. Casual is fine, but remember to be polite. The tone of your e-mail is important. A relaxed or casual tone is fine with friends, but other situations may need a more refined tone. Avoid sending angry e-mails, even if someone has sent you one. Also avoid the use of popular abbreviations; just spell out what you want to say. 10. E-mails are forever. Once you send an e-mail, it's going to be hanging around cyberspace for a long time. Even if you delete it from your Sent box, it will remain in the in-box of others. Then again, deleting it from your computer doesn't really mean it's gone forever. The e-mail servers that maintain our e-mail accounts contain records of what we've been sending and receiving for years. In other words, be careful what you're sending out there!
Did you write that Joy's e-mail has an angry tone? You are correct! You probably explained that Joy used all caps, and she used too many exclamation points. Use of all caps and exclamation points resembles shouting. Joy should have sent an e-mail without all caps and too many exclamation points. Or, she should have spoken to Eva about her feelings in person.
You should have written that Aidan should not forward the joke to his friends because sending jokes, chain e-mails, and other e-mail forwards clogs up in-boxes. Did you also say that you might pass on a virus in these types of e-mails? Excellent!
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8. Keep your attachments to a minimum. Attachments take time to download, they clog up inboxes, and sometimes they contain viruses.