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Basic Email Etiquette |
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In our business, communication is,
after all, what we do. One of the really convenient ways we have to
communicate is by Email. Along with the power it gives us to communicate,
though, Email can cause real problems. We need to
be careful. |
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Often one of us needs to reply to
the sender--but not to everybody else. Send your reply only to the
sender, especially if you're aggravated only at that person. |
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Never type in ALL CAPS unless you
are very angry. As much as possible, use italics instead of
boldface for emphasis. Boldface may be used to emphasize the beginning
of a paragraph, though. Don't underline--people who use
computers think that underlined words are links to web pages. And if
you’re that angry, maybe you should wait a while to send the note! |
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Never send anything in red
type. (Please see #2) |
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If you have something
unpleasant or unappealing to say, use light blue and/or a non-threatening
typeface such as Comic Sans. It’s hard to get angry about a message written in
Comic Sans. On the other hand, be careful about the background. A pastel or
"cute" background may suggest that you're not serious about what you're
saying |
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In most cases, a 10 or 12
point typeface is perfectly adequate. The larger the type, the more
threatening the note. |
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Provide white space.
Reading small type without some white space can be very hard on the eyes.
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Casual or not, grammar and
spelling are important. It’s especially important that we educators appear to
be literate—even to each other. It’s important to consider that while the
spell checker in Word is pretty good, the grammar checker is very poor. |
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Be brief. People who read
hundreds of Emails each day tend to skim over the very long ones. |
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Always remember that people take
the written word very seriously. It is difficult not to sound too
extreme, terse or clinical after you’ve sent (or read) forty Emails. |
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Try to include at least the
pertinent part of the original message when you reply. This makes it a lot
easier to recall the original question. |
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Include a meaningful
subject line. When inboxes are overflowing with spam, it's easy to miss an
important Email if it has a lame subject like "file" or “meeting." |
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Pause before hitting “send.”
Have
you sent email to the wrong person with dire consequences? It is easy to
misaddress an Email. Be careful. |
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Never send something by Email that
you don't want the world to read, or be prepared to face the consequences. |
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When sending to a list, it
doesn't hurt to be completely obsessed with the details. You cannot
rescind something you’ve sent, and material sent to a list will attract even
more criticism. |
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Determine when to include carbon
copies and when to “reply all”: |
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a. |
CC: Used when no action is needed by the reader,
but you want him or her to be party to the conversation. If any action is
needed by the reader, don't CC, but put him or her in the "To" field. |
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b. |
Reply All: (which sends the message to everyone
-- the sender and all other recipients): Only use Reply All when your answer
has some effect on all the readers. Do not reply all when the answer is only
for the sender. An example of when not to reply all would be when you
receive a reminder for an upcoming meeting that was sent to 100 people and
you want to tell the sender that you will be there with a quick "I'll see
you then!" This doesn't need to go to 100 people. |
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c. |
BCC: Use when sending to a group of people,
since many may not want their email addresses publicized. |
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It is not necessary to send a response with just "Thank you."
Include the “Thank
you” when you send the first note so you don’t interrupt the recipient a second
time. It can be a real pain to stop what you're doing to open an email and then
read nothing more than "OK, thanks!" |