E-mail

E-mail problems - General, formatting, HTML
E-mail problems - more.... Including security aspects
E-mail etiquette - and "netiquette" for non-profits, NGOs and SMBs
E-mail etiquette for lists
E-mail and IT abbreviations
Filtering incoming E-mail - typical "list" usage
Emoticons and Smileys
Obfuscate e-mail addresses
AOL E-mail problems

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Browsers

General guidelines:

Email and email discussion groups have been around for decades, and a general consensus has been reached concerning what constitutes "proper" use and "etiquette" including E-mail etiquette for mailing lists. E-mail should constitute a vigorous and informative flow of letters and in the interests of maintaining a high ratio of information to volume, some "Thou Shalt Nots" are listed below.

These items are not meant to be read and memorized. They may be informative if you are new to email and group discussions, but their main function is as a point of referral, should someone happen to be unaware of a particular aspect of netiquette.

1. Please keep your message relatively short. There are no firm guidelines, but four screens of text is getting pretty big.

2. Please consider carefully before submitting a REPLY to "All". It's your call, but there are many instances when it's much more appropriate to send email directly to the individual person who sent the mail. The value of the list to individual members goes down as the percentage of irrelevant posts goes up.

3. If you REPLY to "All", please take care not to quote the entire original message in your note. It may be necessary for reasons of clarity to quote portions of the original message, but keep in mind that everyone on the list already has it, and there is no need to send them a second complete copy. Email software automatically gives your reply a subject line that makes it easy for those who are interested to find the message to which you refer.

4. Please avoid the dreaded "Me Too!" REPLY. This is the one in which - in its pure form - an entire message (headers, signature, and all) is re-posted to everyone on the list with the addition of the responder's header and signature, plus a single line of text indicating agreement. Consider instead replying to the original poster, or - if your confirmation absolutely *must* go to the entire group - remove all but the first two lines of the original message. That and the subject will be more than enough for anyone who's interested.

5. No large commercial messages. If you have a product or service you wish to tell the list members about, a three line description and a URL will be enough to let those who are interested find out about it.

6. Do not attach pictures, programs, word processor documents or other files to your messages to a group or list. Many people have fast computers and fast Internet connections, but not all of us. As well, many people have to physically remove each attachment from their hard drive. If you have something of interest make a short announcement in the list and then send your file to those who reply, or make it available through the WWW or FTP.

7. If you are using a later version of Netscape you may get a complaint that you are attaching a "vcard.vcf" file to your email. You can turn it off by selecting Edit/Preferences/Mail & Groups/Identity and unchecking the box at the bottom about attaching Address Book Card to messages.

8. If you are using Microsoft email clients - Exchange, Outlook, and Outlook Express, to name a few - you MAY receive complaints about WINMAIL.DAT files, or other attachments that you're sure you didn't send. This is because these email clients can be set to send extra formatting information. There will be an option for turning off the extra formatting (Rich Text Format, HTML) but its location varies depending on which email client you're using. Try the Address Book first.

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Revised: 9 February, 2007		Copyright © 1998-2007 Stormy Weather SoftWare Ltd