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Never type all in caps. IT LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE SCREAMING.
It’s polite to type in a subject line so the recipient has some idea what your email is about.
Read your email before you send it. It’s best to be clear and concise because the typed word does not necessarily convey emotion. In fact, a whole vocabulary of emoticons has sprung up to let the reader know you’re joking, or upset, or bewildered. The most popular is the smiley, which you type like this: :)
[Colon, Close Parenthesis] See? If you turn your head sideways, it looks like a smiling face.
Think twice before sending chain letters. Unlike snail mail chain letters, which require a lot of work, email chain letters are sent with the click of the “forward this message” button. Many email chain letters have been around for years and just keep recycling themselves. Unless the one you’re sending is deeply meaningful to you and you believe it will be meaningful to the recipients, don’t send it. Those letters waste a lot of time and bandwidth.
When answering email, take a minute to notice whether the original was sent just to you or to a group (you’ll see this in the cc: line of the email form). Before you hit “reply” make sure you know whether you’re replying just to the sender or to the group (Reply to all). Many times, especially with jokes and other casual correspondence, it’s annoying to receive every single person’s response and you may want to specify that your reply should go just to the sender.
Unlike English class writing, some rules of grammar go out the window in email. For example, regardless of the convention of paragraphs, you may want to break your text into smaller chunks. It’s easier to read.
Once you’ve sent your message it can’t be taken back. It is also relatively public. The sender can forward it along, print it out, post it on a Website or to a newsgroup, etc. If you are using company computers at work, your email is not considered private. Please be sure you mean to say what you’ve written and that you’re comfortable sending it off.
AUTHOR: Jan S. Cohen
MORE INFO: Excerpted from "It's Your Internet Too: Living in the Information Age"
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