E-Mail Etiquette

As e-mail becomes more and more prevalent in the business world, it's crucial to know the dos and don'ts of electronic communication. Adhering to these basic guidelines will help you avoid problems and ensure that all your business correspondence is appropriate:

• Capitalization. Avoid typing in all capitals. In e-mail, using all caps is the equivalent of yelling. Save your use of caps for when you REALLY need to make a point.
• Formatting. Some popular e-mail programs render text with full formatting, letting you add colors, fonts and backgrounds to your messages. Use these features sparingly: Not all e-mail programs handle formatted e-mail messages well. When in doubt, stick to plain text.
• Attachments. Be judicious when sending attachments. If you send an e-mail with an attachment larger than two megabytes (2MB), contact the recipient to let them know you've sent a large file. For those connected at standard modem speeds, large attachments can cause a frustrating system slowdown. When you have to send really large attachments, break them into multiple e-mail messages and send them separately to help distribute the load.
• HTML. When you send HTML files, use a compression program to zip them first. This prevents e-mail programs from rendering the HTML within the e-mail window. As a general rule, don´t send HTML files unless you're certain your recipients can handle them.
• Blind carbon copies. When sending mail to large groups of people — particularly people who may not all know each other — type your own e-mail address in the To field and list the recipients in the BCC field. This prevents recipients from seeing (and having access to) the e-mail addresses of the other recipients.
• Replying to all. Before you hit Send, look at the recipient list. Think about whether you really need to copy all those people on your reply. If you don't, delete the extra addresses before you send the message.
• Forwarding. When forwarding an e-mail message that someone else has written, whether the writer is an employee, client or partner, get the author's permission first. If that's not possible, restate the original contents in your own words, noting the source of the information. Never paste someone else's text into a message and send it off as if you've written it.
• URLs. Many e-mail programs will render clickable URLs when you type a Web address into a message. This allows the recipient to simply click on the link in the message and instantly access a Web page. To ensure that the URLs you include are clickable, use the entire Web address, including the http://. Also, leave a space between the URL and any other words, symbols or punctuation marks.