Email Etiquette

Many people use email everyday without being aware of email etiquette and without realizing that they're 1) annoying co-workers, friends, and relatives; 2) making themselves look naive and amateurish in the email world; and 3) turning themselves into junk mailers, albeit well-intentioned.

If no one has complained about your email etiquette, you're probably in good shape. Or it could be that family members and friends do not want to risk embarrassing you. To be safe, consider the following suggestions and see if your email manners are up to date.

1. Get permission before you add someone to a mailing list.

   You may be well-intentioned, but most people get so much junk mail that they'd rather not receive the inspirational messages that someone sent youespecially since they probably received five other copies already. Not everyone is a curmudgeon about getting email like this, but it's considerate to ask for permission before putting someone on your mailing list (called a Group in Address Book). And please, don't take it personally if they decline. Privacy on the Internet is hard to come by, and many people try to keep their email address off as many mailing lists as possible. When you add someone's address to your mailing list without their permission, you're publishing private information without permission.

2. Clean up the email headers.

   Even if someone wants to be on your mailing list, it's extremely annoying to get email that has dozens (or hundreds) of lines of header information before the message. This happens when you receive an email message that was sent to a list (a Group), then someone sent it to their list, then someone else sent it to their list. This kind of email makes the sender look like the clueless amateur he is. Before you forward a message like this, press-and-drag to select the good part of the message. Then when you click the Forward button in Mail, only the selected part will be in the message body for sending.

3. Hide the mailing list addresses.

   When you send a message to a Group with all the addresses exposed, you are essentially providing every reader of the message with the email addresses of all your friends and relations. Then if those people forward your message, all of their recipients have the email addresses of all your friends and relations. Not many people appreciate that. Not only is it neater to hide these addresses, it is more polite to everyone involved. To hide the addresses of a Group in Mail, go to the Mail Preferences, click "Composing," and make sure there is NO checkmark in the option "When sending to a group, show all member addresses."

4. Take the time to personalize your email.

   If you send well-intentioned junk email to an acquaintance, friend, or relative, it will be appreciated if you take the time to add a personal note to the forwarded message, such as "Hi Jay, I thought you might enjoy this." To receive an unsolicited, unsigned, almost-anonymous forwarded email makes me wonder when I can expect to start receiving the rest of the sender's postal service junk mail and Sunday supplements.

5. Identify your email attachments.

   When you attach a file to an email message, don't make the recipient guess what kind of file it is or what program might open it. Include a description of the attachment and the file type, or what program is needed to open it. Say something like, "Barbara, the attached file is a photograph that I saved as a .tif in Photoshop CS2 on a Mac." Dealing with attachments can be confusing and any helpful information is usually appreciated.

   Tip

   See page 415 in the Mail chapter for tips on what kinds of attachments to send.

   
   

6. Don't fall for the urban legends and hoaxes.

   When you get a panic-stricken email from a friend warning you of an apocalyptic virus and to "Please forward this email to everyone you know," do not forward it to anyone you know. This email message usually contains the words "THIS IS NOT A HOAX!" That means that this is a hoax. These messages float around the Internet constantly and some of them are many years old. If there's a deadly virus about to destroy the world as we know it, you're more likely to hear about it from the national news services and online news sites than from your cousin who's been using email for three months.

   And anyway, your Mac doesn't get these viruses.

   Also, do not forward the email messages that tell you Microsoft will pay you one dollar every time you use Hotmail. And don't forward the warning that the postal service is going to start charging us for every email, or that the phone company is going to tax every message, and that little boy in the hospital who is waiting for your postcard went home years ago.

   And make darn sure your email recipient has begged you to send all those messages that say "Send this to at least ten other people. Do not break this chain!"