Mind Your E-Mail Manners

Flooding In-Boxes Won't Win Friends or Influence People

Infraction 4: Spamming and Chain E-Mail

Few people enjoy receiving unsolicited marketing e-mail, especially from friends, family, or coworkers who have something to gain by forwarding it. Likewise, avoid flooding all your friends' in-boxes with chain messages. Example: An executive we'll call Bob receives an unsolicited e-mail advertising a new cell phone. The message offers a price break to anyone who forwards the spam to another ten people. Bob obliges, sending the spam to ten friends. But that makes nearly all of his friends unhappy. Later, Bob discovers the cell phone offer was actually a hoax. The net result: Bob looked gullible and irritated his friends in the process.

Advice: Never send spam unless you do the following first: Ask the recipients for their permission. Check to make sure the spam is legitimate. If you subscribe to e-mail lists, and you want to reply to a specific message, reply only to the list's broadcast address if your point is directed at the list membership at large. Otherwise, replace the membership address in the To: field of your e-mail with the address of the individual to whom you wish to reply.

Infraction 5: Getting Too Attached to Attachments

With e-mail, you can easily share photos, short videos, MP3 files, and other content simply by attaching them. But as the recent Love Bug virus outbreak demonstrated, attachments can quickly spread trouble. They can also take forever to download, perhaps tying up a friend's only phone line. And it's possible the recipient may never even receive the file, since some companies and individuals automatically block all incoming e-mail attachments.

Advice: Always ask for permission before sending attachments. Many e-mail systems, such as America Online's, limit the quantity or size of attachments and could cut them off. The simple rule here is: When in doubt, leave it out.

Infraction 6: Not Bothering to Check Your Spelling and Grammar

E-mail often contains more misspellings than a third-grade book report. Some people are insulted when they receive a message containing poor spelling and grammar. And it certainly doesn't reflect well on the writer. After all, most e-mail and word processing programs have both spelling and grammar correction built in; most people simply don't use these features.

"It is decidedly rude to make mistakes in e-mail, because the recipient will then have difficulty reading and understanding the message," writes etiquette expert Letitia Baldrige.

Advice: Proofread messages before sending. If your e-mail application lacks a spelling and grammar checker, write your message in a program that has it, such as Microsoft Word, then cut and paste the text into your e-mail message.

Infraction 7: Taking Too Long to Respond

Everyone knows how busy and important you are. But that doesn't give you an excuse to ignore an e-mail (excluding spam) or not respond in a timely manner. Simply put, it's disrespectful not to reply quickly, even if it's just to say, "I got your message but don't have time to read it now; I'll get back to you ASAP."

Advice: Always respond to e-mail within one business day. For those occasional times (such as vacation) when you can't access your e-mail, set up an automatic reply that informs others when you'll be able to respond and whom they should contact during your absence. Some Internet Service Providers can help you set this up, or can even forward your e-mail to another address during vacation.