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Community Newsletter: Q&A: Share with us some of your e-mailing etiquette
- 11/2/07 9:51 AM
Share with us some of your e-mailing etiquette
by Lee Koo (ADMIN) - 11/2/07 9:51 AM
Hi folks,
After discussing cell phone calling etiquettes recently in the CNET Community Hot topic newsletter, I received this e-mailed from a member saying that he just received a big scolding for "replying to all" to tell all that what was sent was untrue. Here is the e-mail he sent to me:
"I really enjoy these weekly questions. I think it is important to have an ongoing conversation about technology and how it affects our lives like this weeks topic on Cell Phone Manners. (of course, I like the more technical questions as well and have learned a lot from these.)
I had an experience today with an e-mail that raises an interesting question that you might like to share with your readers. I was included on one of those "warning" forwarded e-mails. Because the information in it was not true, I "replied to all" recipients to refute the assertion in the e-mail and provide evidence for my statements. The original author took offense that I would chastise her in that way. As I was discussing the event with my wife, she mentioned a time that she had used a reply all on an e-mail only to get scolded by the original sender and some of the other addressees. Here's my question: If someone includes multiple addressees in the 'to:' or 'cc"' lines of an e-mail (instead of hiding them in a 'bcc:' line), does any recipient have a reason to believe that the original author has tacitly permitted a 'reply all'? Similarly, should I be offended if someone has included my e-mail address in a 'to:' or 'cc:' line of an e-amil when not all recipients know each other, since they are essentially giving my address to everyone else on the list?
Best Regards,
Gordon"
Anyways, I thought this topic was very interesting as there are really no written rules about e-mail etiquettes and wanted to share this with you, so we can discuss this member's experience and talk about e-mail etiquette. So if you have some advice for this member or just want to share with some of us the dos and don'ts about using e-mail, post them in this thread. I'm sure it would be helpful to many.
Thanks!
-Lee
The Truth About Email
by thesmokersclub - 10/25/07 2:18 PM In reply to: Share with us some of your e-mailing etiquette by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
From my site at http://class.smokersclub.com/
Q: What's the truth about email?
... The odds that the person you are emailing is sitting there at his desk this exact moment, waiting for an email to show up, and will respond within seconds is.... not very good. Not good at all.
... A good reason why someone hasn't responded yet is that they have a life, job, children, or a favorite program is on TV. Email is just like any other form of communication, people will get back to you when they can.
... Your newbie status will shine thru the moment you write to someone and ask if they got your email an hour ago. If he has not answered you yet, think of your phone answering machine at home. When you get home to listen to messages, don't you hear all 12 from Mom at once, asking you if you got the previous messages? My favorite one is the last... "I guess you are not home." Derr.
... If you wrote to a business, or a stranger, and haven't heard back in a day or two, write again and ask if your first email got caught in their spam folder and they never saw it. Then go have a beer while you think about how your second email is going to bypass their spam program if the first one didn't. (More about automated spam programs later.)
... Using an email to your local police in place of a 911 call for emergency service is really stupid.
... If you are emailing an important insurance paper to your doctor's office and there is no time issue involved, that's fine. Put a receipt on that one email so you'll know they got it by the date and time it was opened in their office. Receipts are wonderful for a working project with someone whose internet provider is flaky as a corn cereal and you have to know that every step of the project is being worked on at the same time with the newest version. Do NOT use receipts all the time. Some folks have to click on a popup screen to agree to send every receipt from their email system. If you send an email to a friend, they will let you know if they don't get it. Go have another beer, you still aren't "getting this" are you?
... Never, ever, ever, ever, ever send any email you get in, on to your friends without checking it at Truth Or Fiction first. Click on the Search link at the top banner and look for your email subject matter. Forwarding on an emergency email about a child who wasn't even missing 10 years ago when the email started being circulated, or any of the old wives tales, warnings, offers, or other bogus emails, will make you look silly at best. It'll get you yelled at in online groups. Your dog will run away from embarrassment. Young children will point and laugh on the street.
... Email is not a chat screen. CU may be fine for "texting," but in an email it makes you look like a 12 year old middle school dropout. While we're on the subject... use the spell checker. Making the occasional silly is one thing and no one cares. People who write serious emails often are going to be judged by the look and content of their email, as well as the ugly, or lack of a good sig file.
... Email and web pages are forever. Remember when your Dad told you to never commit anything to writing because it can come back and bite you in the rear later? He was right. The "web" is a living, breathing, growing critter that has an incredible memory and it wants to stomp you into the ground. It will ruin you in any way possible. It could use a newbie who makes a mistake and writes to someone else with your note still there below on that same email form. It can use you when you scan an email quickly and respond thinking you are writing back to one person when it's really someone else. It will cause us to hit the wrong addy in our own addy books when writing to one person and in reality sending the email to someone else. It will take private email and post it on web pages that are forever searchable, and old copies of a page, how it looked years ago, are retrievable. Removing a web page from the web doesn't mean it is gone.
... When sending an email, it comes FROM you and goes TO the person you are writing to.
... If you are sending an email to a lot of folks, send it FROM you and TO you, add the other folks to the BCC line. This way everyone responds only to you and not to everyone causing a chain reaction of everyone answering everything that everyone says. This mistake will lead you into a downward spiral of hundreds of emails telling you to use the BCC line and fighting over whatever the innocent topic was in the first place. By the time Joe checks his email in 4 days and finds 300 emails all with the same subject line... you lost a friend. The Pope himself would respond that he hates sunny days just to jump in and argue with the guy who told someone else that they are stupid.
... Everyone getting an email FROM and TO you, will not know who else got the original email. They will also know that there is no chance of this email being forwarded onto others and picked up for harvesting by evil email spammers.
... When is an email exchange over? If the email is with 2 people or a BCC group of 100... if there is no question posed to you or everyone in the group, don't answer it. If there is a question but it is not for you to personally answer by name, don't answer it. If you have nothing important to add, don't answer it. Otherwise you'll end up in several email encounters that never die.
... If you send a note to your friend saying, "It sure is cold here!" you may not get a response. If you ask, "Is it cold there too?" you will get an answer. You are not allowed to say a month later that the other person owes you the next email because you told him it was cold in your area. That only works for real snail mailed letters delivered by a postal employee. With real mail, you play "tag," but not in email.
Everything written above is from experience, things that people do all the time, things that newbies will do next week, things that shouldn't happen at all but are part of the natural learning process.
Email Replies
by jimc52 - 11/2/07 3:23 PM In reply to: The Truth About Email by thesmokersclubI can understand why you would want to cc everyone that was cc'd from the orginator...I don't know the content of the email, but it appears it contained some sensitive issue.
First of all, you wanted everyone that had gotten the email to hear what you had to say in response. Depending on what you had to say and how you said it, probably makes all the difference in the world.
Secondly, if your response contained negative input or politicially incorrect wording, the sender probably felt embarrassed in front of all the cc'd people. Or, perhaps, you discussed certain facts or issues which the other cc'd people were not all supposed to be privy to. In these cases, it may well be, it was inappropriate to cc everyone back. So I would say, you have to use disgression.
Thirdly, if your comments were negative, or politically incorrect or you had discussed issues not privy or relevant to all the other recipients, I might, in such a circumstance, view it as an in-fight between you and the sender, of which, I had no part of. It doesn't look good in business to put those kinds of things into emails or to appear to be "fighting" with someone else...very unprofessional. And I certainly could understand why you might be chastized for doing it.
When you write an email, you must use courtesy, disgression and above all, use common sense. Think about what you are saying. Are all your responses to sender also applicable to all that are cc'd??? Is what you writing about only privy to the sender or just a few of the cc'd but not all?
It may be you didn't know the topic was sensitive, privy to just certain persons...I think we have all made a few mistakes using email...certainly I have a couple of times...and I learned from it.
When you write an email to anyone, even just one person, it's like broadcasting the email to the entire world, or the entire company or the entire group. Nobody wants to be put on the spot, look ignorant, confused or incompetent in front of colleagues. After all, credibility is everything in business. Take care with all your words, think things out clearly before clicking the "SEND" button, and if in doubt, sit back a while and delay your response until you are clear about how relevant your response is to all the others.
That's what I think about the issue.
PS - I always think out who I am writing to, and try to AVOID at all costs a RESPOND TO ALL. I have found that responding to all clutters up people's in-box when they are busy and don't have time to read irrelevant emails. People get upset with an in-box full of what they consider "spam" mail, or advertising or unnecessary correspondence.
disgression
by amm2 - 11/2/07 8:04 PM In reply to: Email Replies by jimc52I think you mean discretion, yes?
When you write an email, you must use courtesy,
by ust1268 - 11/2/07 8:39 PM In reply to: Email Replies by jimc52disgression??? I think you mean discretion. Oops, sorry, am I not being PC by correcting you in a public forum? Learn to use spellcheck (per the response above you).
discretion
by amm2 - 11/3/07 11:19 PM In reply to: When you write an email, you must use courtesy, by ust1268Spell check cannot correct incorrect use of word.
Disgression: a disgressive (unaggressive?) digression
by davebBerkeley - 11/4/07 9:52 AM In reply to: discretion by amm2Tho spell check (in most email systems) won't address grammar and thus won't correct a real word used incorrectly, 'disgression'isn't a word, and would have been caught by any spell checker. The original author should note that, if using spell check in one's emails is advisable for you, as he indeed advised, then using it in forum posts is essential.
Responsiblity
by inch13 - 11/3/07 2:53 PM In reply to: Email Replies by jimc52jimc52 seems to place all the blame on Gordon, the responder. Shouldn't the original sender bear the majority of the responsibility for getting their facts correct. If you are foolish enough to send out bogus information to a large cc group, you deserve to be embarassed. Perhaps the next time the sender will not be so blasie about the information they choose to diseminate.
Blasie
by gtbell - 11/4/07 11:48 AM In reply to: Responsiblity by inch13Blase' NOT blasie.
Responsibility
by b_swingin - 11/5/07 10:31 AM In reply to: Responsiblity by inch13'disseminate' not 'diseminate'
Responsibility
by dizzyqueen - 11/7/07 11:10 AM In reply to: Responsiblity by inch13Amen! I have one friend who continually forwards erroneous information, not matter how many times I have begged her to check the facts. I don't want my inbox cluttered with useless information, and I shouldn't be the one who has to take time to check the facts. That is the responsibility of the sender.
email etiquette
by jean harrington - 11/2/07 4:46 PM In reply to: The Truth About Email by thesmokersclubI think that at this stage of internet,
it's very, very sad that only 1 person
among the many whom I have their email address, uses bcc.
It's not going to work.
Using the bcc line.
by cybersam - 11/3/07 9:18 AM In reply to: email etiquette by jean harringtonI've been using email for about ten years now and never knew what the bcc was for (and didn't really spend much time thinking about it). I can think of a few instances where I wish I had. Now I know and will help spread the word (when appropriate).
That bcc line....
by mikehattan - 11/3/07 10:51 AM In reply to: Using the bcc line. by cybersamI have been using email prodigiously for many years now and I too never knew what the bcc or cc line was for. Thanks to this forum I will now think twice before mailing off dozens of collective emails.
So will doing this make it seem as if I am mailing to one single person? Thereby making it a more personal form of communication...
What is the difference between BCC and CC....?
Thanks for the education.
Mike.
BCC vs CC
by kcbttns - 11/3/07 10:59 AM In reply to: That bcc line.... by mikehattanThe main difference between CC and BCC is that with CC, you send the mail to all the recipients, and they can all see who else you sent it to, with BCC the only thing they will see is "unknown recipient" or their own e-mail address
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