With the advance of the Internet, there has been a degradation of many other things in life. One of the greatest changes has been the English language, both written (typed in this case) and spoken. Have you noticed that “dot” has almost completely replaced the words “period” and “point”?
With that in mind, one of the biggest gripes I have concerns etiquette where it applies to email. I call this “Text Etiquette”. I bring these up not to be critical of others, but to draw attention to items that a) take away from the reader’s experience, b) are matters of courtesy and c) can make the originator look a lot less intelligent than they think they are. If you ever get an email from me you’ll see that I adhere to my own rules a very large percentage of the time. They’re points of common consideration and can have a positive or negative effect on the person on the other monitor.
Do Not Start Your Email In The Subject Line! – We all get emails that do this…in fact, one of my best friends is very guilty of this. For example:
SUBJ: I do not think…
BODY: …that it matters at all, as long as they’re all green
The subject is supposed to be just that – what the email is about. Tell the recipient what to expect – don’t lead into the email in the Subject line. You should look at the Subject in as something in parenthesis – you should be able to remove it and not change the meaning of what you’re trying to convey. In the example above if you removed the subject line the first sentence makes no sense at all.
DO NOT TYPE IN ALL CAPS. – It gives the reader the impression that you’re yelling or upset. It’s also considered rude. One or two words is ok for emphasis, but those that don’t know how to turn off the CAPS-LOCK need to take a close look at their keyboard. It’s also very irritating to read.
conversely, don’t use all lower-case letters. – This shows a sloppy, lazy typist. Give yourself at least the LOOK of someone of average intelligence and learn how to Capitalize where you need to.
Use paragraphs to separate different thoughts. – Quite often one will receive an email that runs on and on for 18-20 lines of text, expressing half a dozen ideas and two quotes from friends of theirs. If you remember anything from High School English class, you use a different paragraph for each thought/idea and quotes from different people are considered a different paragraph as well.
When including a URL or an Email address, put it on it’s own line of text. – When you include URLs and Email addresses within a sentence or line of text they can often get swallowed up by the surrounding text, and it draws attention away from them. Ever try to find a URL in an 800 word email, having to read the entire thing? Putting it on it’s own line sets it apart from the rest of the misspelled, grammatically incorrect ramblings about your friend’s date last night.
Use the friggin’ Spell-Chekker. – Come on. Aside from the second and third items above, the thing that takes away from the credibility of an email faster than anything is misspelled words. By The Way – There IS a difference between “then” and “than”, just like there’s a difference between “you’re” and “your” and between “there”, “their”, and “they’re”.
Be patient if you don’t get an immediate reply. – Not everyone checks their email several times a day like I do, or even on a daily basis. People have lives away from their mailbox, which includes such incidentals as spouses, children, meals, jobs, school, vacations, and many, many other unimaginable things that may take them away from the extremely urgent nature of the email you just sent.
Don’t FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: Garbage. – Don’t forward needless garbage. Anyone who’s been on the ‘Net for any amount of time has probably seen it anyway. In particular, don’t forward chain emails. The claims that bad things happen to those who don’t are complete bullshit – you won’t die and you’re not going to get a large sum of money from Microsoft. Chain emails are for the very, very gullible. Do you enjoy getting chain email? The 15 people you’re about to forward it to probably won’t either. Do you read the entire thing and follow the procedure? The 15 people you’re about to forward it to probably won’t either.
If you must FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD… – If, for some ungodly reason, you are inclined to forward that recipe, joke, anecdote, Top Ten List, plea-for-a-dying-child, or ASCII-gram, at least make it look like you’re not sending on someone else’s waste. Remove the 300-400 lines of previous message headers and get rid of the carrot tops (>). The best way? COPY the part that you feel is so important to pass along and PASTE it onto a NEW document.
>Spend a few minutes cleaning
>it up and re-paginate the
>thing so that it’s not a long
>column down the left side
>of the page that’s only 40
>characters wide and takes
>a lot more effort to read than
>you’re willing to spend and
>therefore you end up simply
>deleting it from your mailbox
>unread.
Listen when people ask you to stop. – Some people just don’t get the hint when you ask them to stop sending you forward, garbage, “cute” emails or pictures, endearing worthless poems, or chain letters. If someone asks you to stop sending them these things, don’t piss someone off and keep sending them. Your relationship will be better because of it.
Don’t Use Chat Abbreviations in Email – The use of L8R, BRB, ROFLMAO, LOL, GF, and UR are common in the chat arena, but if you use these – and the thousands of other chat abbreviations – in email, you a) spend too much time chatting, b) need to pay better attention to what you’re doing, 3) are showing a lack of common spelling/grammatical skills and 4) need to get a better life.
