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Let’s look at an e-mail scenario. As Manager of Network Operations you need to send your staff a memo regarding a meeting starting at 1:00 p.m. the following day. In days gone by, forms of communication were done using face-to-face meetings, official memos, or a phone call. But times have changed and electronic mail (e-mail) is now the form of communication used more often in business settings. Sending e-mail messages is very easy and there is a written record. What is forgotten is that it is not always the best way to communicate and it does have some limitations.
Electronic mail does have its pitfalls. To name a few, let’s begin with trying to not be a novelist. You should type and convey your messages as if you were having a telephone conversation. Recipients do not want to read messages that never seem to end or the point is never made.
Be careful with the usage of punctuation. Putting numerous exclamation points at the end of a sentence is no big deal and can be annoying to the recipient. You should not use punctuation to make something seem important. Instead it should be reflected in the text of message. Keeping the limit of characters per line to 70 is a good idea. There are still people who work on dumb terminals or teletype devices and do not have the luxury of word wrapping. Normally 80 characters per line are the limit, but this will allow for text wrapping at wrong points or not wrapping at all.
Usually when typing a memo formatting is important, but this takes a back burner in e-mail. If too much formatting is used, it will look like gibberish to the recipient. Keep your formatting simple with plain text. Type a sentence and end with a period. This is simple, but effective.
What I find in messages received by senders is the usage of abbreviations. E-mail users should use abbreviations that are most common to everyone. This is abbreviations such as FYI (for your information) or BTW (by the way). If you want to confuse the recipient, try using something like TTYL (talk to you later).
Be careful when using visual symbols. Users have come up with something called “smiles”. Strings of characters are put together to convey emotions to the recipient. One common example is :-) . If you tilt your head to the left, viola! You will see a happy face. If you will notice the colon is the eyes, the dash is the nose, and the right parenthesis is the mouth. Below are a few more examples:
;-) light sarcasm
:-| indifference
:-> heavy sarcasm
:-( displeasure
There are hundreds of these, so use them with caution. The connotation is not universal.
Privacy is a separate issue in itself. If you think there is privacy in electronic mail messages, think again. There are companies that monitor their employees e-mail. This type of behavior has been unacceptable for many users. I’m assuming that companies are trying to ensure that company secrets are not leaked or frivolous messages are not being sent.
Have you ever been flamed? This means that the e-mail message you sent to someone upset him or her. They, in turn, replied to the e-mail using inappropriate language. A good response to this is no response at all. Just remember everyone reads things differently, so think before you write.
Another good etiquette tip is to use initial caps when sending electronic mail. This means not using capital letters because this means you are shouting. You can use capital letters or uppercase letters ONLY when trying to make a point.
Keep in mind that when your e-mail is sent and reaches its destination, does not mean the recipient has read the message. Of course, some e-mail programs allow you to receive a confirmation when the recipient reads your message. Even though the recipient has read the message, make sure you have worded the message so that he or she can understand. Make sure you are concise and try not to be wordy or lengthy on your messages, if at all possible. Avoiding attaching larger files over 100KB is better. The download time for larger files can be annoying to the recipient.
Be creative when including subject lines. Subject lines that are catchy will peak recipient’s curiosity. When replying to a message, copy parts of the original message into your reply. This helps the original sender of the message to remember what they were asking or what was discussed in the message. Be careful when replying to a message. Some e-mail programs allow you to “Reply” or “Reply to All”. As you can guess with the second option, your reply would be sent to all recipients, instead of the original sender. A good idea when forwarding a message to a person is to include a brief explanation or introductory comment. This is a flag for the recipient to determine of this pertains to something they need to do or know immediately.
I would suggest deleting any message(s) that you no longer need in order to free up disk space. Remember that you do have the option of printing out your electronic messages.
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