How to Improve Your Email Etiquette

2009-06-11T10:38:00.002-04:00

The following is an article reprinted from wikiHow.com (http://www.wikihow.com/Improve-Your-Email-Etiquette). I think it is important to be heard even if you are not speaking. I hope you find this article helpful. I know I did.

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Just about everyone knows how to write a “formal” letter, and people generally take great care to make sure their snail mail letters are just right. Emails, however, are another matter entirely. Opening up your inbox can be like opening a Pandora’s box of bad grammar, bad spelling, and bad taste. What impressions do your emails give of you? If you want to set your emails apart from the pack, follow these steps to improve your email etiquette.

Steps

Use the recipient fields correctly. If you’re just sending an email to one person, place their email address in the “to” field. If you want to send the same email to others, you can place additional addresses in the “cc” field. Note, however, that all the recipients will be able to see all the other recipients’ email addresses. Since this may be undesirable if you’re sending an email to people who don’t know each other, you can protect your recipients’ privacy by entering their addresses in the “bcc” field to send everyone a “blind carbon copy.” For company email, use of "bcc" may be considered impolite, addressees in the "to" field are expected to take action, and those on "cc" are for information only.
Make the subject line useful. The subject line should provide a useful summary of the email's content. Email inboxes are frequently swamped, and a good subject line helps the recipient determine how urgent your email is. A good subject can also prevent your email from being deleted before it's even read. Remember, the subject is the first thing your recipient will see, so it's a good idea to make sure it's free of errors. Keep it concise, and avoid using generic subjects such as "Hi," "What's up," or the recipient's name, as these may be blocked by anti-spam filters.
Get out of the habit of prioritizing your messages. There is nothing more irritating and presumptuous than assuming your e-mail request is higher in the queue than anybody else's, especially in a work context. Give the receiver the credit for working out themselves how to prioritize your message. Granted, there are certain instances when receipt required is needed for record keeping purposes or proof of receipt and there are other times when things are urgent (in which case, still consider if using the phone or making an internet voice call might be faster and more direct). But to mark every email as "Urgent! Receipt Required!!" or to call it "High Priority" or "Receipt Required" is not necessary and can be annoying and confusing to the receiver.
Greet your recipient. Letters, of course, generally begin with the salutation "Dear (recipient's name)," but emails are generally less formal, and "Hi" or "Hello" will usually suffice. Depending on the purpose of the email—for example, if it's a cover letter for a job application—you may want to use the traditional format instead.
Keep your email concise, conversational, and focused. It's harder to read letters on a computer screen than on a sheet of paper, so it's nice to keep emails short and to the point. While there's no ideal email length, sentences should be kept short, about 8-12 words. Leave a space between paragraphs.
Use proper grammar and spelling. An email reflects on its author, and an email with spelling or grammar errors reflects badly. Use standard English (or whatever language you're writing in), and proofread and spell-check emails as you would any written communication. An error-free email makes a good impression and is easier for the recipient to read.
Avoid fancy formatting. Changing fonts and colors, inserting bulleted lists, or using HTML can make an email look bizarre or render it unreadable for the recipient, even if the formatting looks fine on your computer. Keep it simple.
Schedule Reply to emails. Unlike snail mail, emails arrive instantly, and the sender knows this. As a result, people typically expect a quick response, and it's polite to try to meet these expectations. It also chews up an enormous amount of your time to respond to emails instantaneously. Some say that you should schedule times to read and respond to emails to be more productive. Also, teach your colleagues, through an email signature or response, that urgent items should be done by telephone and that you will get back to the person within a specified time frame.
Determine to whom you should reply. Emails sent to only you generally require that you reply only to the sender, but for emails sent to several people, you may need to choose the "Reply to All" option to send your response to everyone. However, be judicious. Using "Reply All", all the time creates returns in abundance and leaves messages languishing in the in-boxes of many people. Consider the consequences of receiving an email, hitting reply all and it goes out to twenty people and then those twenty people hit reply to all... It can compound very quickly into hundreds of thousands of emails. Once you hit reply all, everyone feels compelled to hit reply all as a means of keeping everyone in the loop because nobody knows who is meant to read it and who is not!
Think twice before replying to just say thank you. Some people don't want want an e-mail that says "thanks". This takes additional energy to open the e-mail and read it just to read what you already know. A new trend is to include a line that says NTN - No Thanks Needed.
Edit long emails when replying to them. Generally your reply to an email will include the original email, as well. If the original email is short, you can just reply to it as is, but if it's longer, you should delete irrelevant parts (especially headers and signatures) and organize your reply so that you quote parts of the original email and place your responses to each part directly below that part. This way, the recipient will know exactly what questions or statements from his email you are responding to.
Conversely, be sure to include info that you are responding to. Many people and companies write and respond to hundreds of emails every day. Avoid sending an email that says only 'Yes,' for example. Include the question that the recipient asked so they know what you are responding to.
End your email on a cordial note. Closing with a statement such as "Best wishes," "Good luck," or "Thanks in advance for your help," can soften even a harsh email and can elicit a more favorable reply.
Sign your name. Yes, the recipient knows whom the email is from, but it's polite and personal to sign your name at the end. You can just type your name at the end of each email, or you can use your email application to create a default signature with your name, title, and contact information.
Limit attachments. Don't add an attachment unless it's necessary, and keep attachments as small as possible. Most email applications can send and receive attachments up to 1 MB, but anything over that can be a hassle for you or the recipient, and even smaller files can take a long time to open if the recipient's email connection is slow. If you need to send a larger file, compress or zip it.
Don't ignore valid emails. If someone asks you a valid question in an email, then reply to it, even if the answer is not what they want to hear. If you need to pass it to someone else, then CC: the sender so they know what is going on. It's more frustrating to be ignored, than it is to receive a "No" answer. If the person was on the phone or in front of you, chances are you would not ignore them if they asked a question, so don't do it in an email.
Be careful of who you copy on replies. If you reply to a message and then CC: a third-party that the original sender did not include, be certain in your mind that the original sender will not be upset about it. This information may have been "for your eyes only". This is especially important if the original sender is your work supervisor. In the same respect, also be cautious about using BCC:. This can backfire if the person being BCC:'d replies back, not having seen that their copy was a blind one.
Think before you send. Don't send e-mails when you are emotional. Feel free to write the subject and text of the e-mail, then save it. Only add the recipients and send it after you have had time to think about what you are sending. You might change your mind and be better off for it. Better yet, pick up the phone or even go to see the person face-to-face. It is hard enough to judge the tone of an e-mail, even with the prevalent use of emoticons. A person's voice should tell you more about his or her intent than the written word will.

For video and more tips, go to the full article http://www.wikihow.com/Improve-Your-Email-Etiquette

How Green Are You?

2009-03-27T18:39:00.000-04:00

Have you noticed our world is getting greener? Some of this planet's brightest minds are focused on reducing greenhouse gases, saving natural resources, and reducing man's impact to the eco-system.

See the results of climate change on glaciers. This remarkable image sequence captures a series of massive calving events at Columbia Glacier near Valdez, Alaska. Composed of 436 frames taken between May and September of 2007, it shows the glacier rapidly retreating by about half a mile (1.6 kilometers), a volume loss of some 0.4 cubic miles (1.67 cubic kilometers) of ice or 400 billion gallons (1.5 trillion liters) of water.

What are you doing to get ready for your greener future?

One easy thing to do is focus in your own community. The adage "Think globally. Act locally." may be cliche' but it is powerful. If we focus on the things we can control and change the way we live and encourage others to do the same, change will come.

Contact your local government and challenge them to do more to green the earth. Suggest they attend:

Rocky Mountain Institute has launched Project Get Ready, an initiative aimed at preparing communities for plug-in vehicles, including full battery electric, plug-in hybrid electric, and converted hybrid or internal combustion vehicles.

A culmination of the October Smart Garage Summit, the Project Get Ready Initiative includes a new website, (www.projectgetready.com), a 'menu' of actions to help prepare communities for the plug-in transition, and a database of all national (and some international) plug-in readiness activities.

As part of the initiative, RMI will convene at least 20 cities and other technical players regularly to discuss lessons learned and best practices. Findings will be reported on the Project Get Ready website.

See the full press release and listen to an audio recording of today's press call.

Solutions For Work and Home

How to Improve Your Email Etiquette

How Green Are You?