This document provides guidelines for proper email etiquette. It suggests being polite, ensuring message content is relevant to recipients, including a subject line, trimming quoted text, being patient with others, including a signature, informing others if forwarding a message, not replying in anger, avoiding all caps or excessive punctuation, not sending large attachments without permission, and avoiding arguments or abusive messages. It also warns against overusing urgency markings or posting your email publicly to avoid junk messages. A website for more email etiquette rules is provided.
2. … try to think about the message
content before you send it out.
… make sure that the content is relevant
to the recipients.
… be polite.
… ensure that you have a relevant
“Subject” line.
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3. … trim any quoted message down as
much as possible.
… try to quote from the original message
where relevant. You can break the
quoted message down into paragraphs
and comment on them individually to
make it clearer.
… be patient with inexperienced e-mail
users.
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4. … include a brief signature on your
e-mail messages to help the recipient
understand who it is from.
… tell your correspondent if you forward
a message to somebody else to deal
with, so they know who to expect a reply
from.
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5. … reply to an e-mail message when
angry, as you may regret it later. Once
the message has been sent, you will not
be able to recover it.
… type in CAPITALS as this is considered
to be SHOUTING. This is one of the rudest
things you can do.
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6. … over-use punctuation such as
exclamation marks (“!”) as these are
meant to be for emphasis, especially if
your e-mail is quite formal. Also, over-use
of the full-stop (e.g. “....”) can make a
message difficult to read.
… send irrelevant messages, especially
to mailing lists or newsgroups.
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7. … send large attachments without
checking with the recipient first.
… conduct arguments in public, for
example on a mailing list.
… send people abusive e-mail
messages.
… make personal remarks about third
parties.
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8. … mark things as urgent if they aren’t,
because then when you really do have
an urgent message it may not be
treated in the way it deserves.
… post your e-mail address on web sites
and other public parts of the Internet
unless you want to be deluged with junk.
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9. … a list of 32 golden rules of e-mail
etiquette at www.emailreplies.com
English Language I
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10. … a list of 32 golden rules of e-mail
etiquette at www.emailreplies.com
English Language I
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