Tech Tips and Tricks

I was reading a post from a friend on why some emails are never answered? It ignited a bunch of itches that have plagued my conscience long back on how can some people never care about their email etiquette.

I’m not even talking about Spam, but those emails that are irritatingly awkward, utterly kiddish –

• SMS-fied text.
• All CAPS.
• Drastic grammatical error.
• Removing any reference to the previous thread.
• Very long Signature, Disclaimer, Notice, Warranty, Guarantee.
• HTML when Plain Text would have been way better.
• Microsoft Word/Powerpoint attachment without asking for acceptance permission.

Before getting to the part about observing some simple email etiquette to get a better response to your email, let’s look at Deepak’s article on

How to create a ‘better’ email ID?

It is better to create/change your email ID right now than doing it later, when people have already added/used your emails. If you’re changing your ID, make sure your old one is re-directed to the new one, preferably with a one-time-notice that your mail ID have changed and that you’re using your new ID. Keep the re-direction as long as you can or at least long enough time for people to forget your old ID.

• If you’ve your own domain — please use it. Perhaps, use Google Apps for domain and you’ll never need to worry about tying your email to your web host. It is also one of the best Spam Filter for your email.
• Get those common denominator - Gmail, Yahoo! and Hotmail/MSN. You’ll need them at many places, services.
• For public domain emails (Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!), use something related to your name — JohnDoe, JaneDoe — and not those strange ones — lovelyJill, sweetJack, Hardick. Underscore, an alphanumeric character(s) prepended or appended is considered OK.

Simple Email Etiquette that can save your emails from being un-answered, un-noticed and ignored.

These days, many companies enforces and encourages Email Etiquette which is a very good initiative; here I’ll be talking more about Email Etiquette from a personal usage perspective.

• Short, sweet and sharp — Try to hit the point right on, make your email short and sweet.
• Answer to Questions in a sequence — Every email client’s got that feature which allows you to mark quoted text with a symbol, like “>” or “|”, use it to make a conversation effective. Separate questions out and answer them one by one in a sequence. It is hard to related your answers if you have shoved the Questions I asked at the bottom of your email.
• Spell Check — It is fine to left out some spelling un-checked in a hurry (everybody is in a hurry) but don’t make it drastically bad. Let your mail client do the checking and change the ones that are glaring at you for a correction.
• Grammar — Now, we communicate across the globe and not all are English speakers. It is fine to have grammatical error but not beyond the point that your sentences makes no sense, worst when they begin to make an alternate meaning.
• Be careful with your attachments — I’ve seen people sending me attachments of images of their “certified instructor logo”, “certified developer logo”, every time they emailed me. That is OK for the first email, it is irritating after that. Keep your credentials on your website or just a text link in your signature should be enough.
• ALL CAPS — Of course, this is a real NO-NO unless you are in military and your email is sent from the battle-field in Iraq.
• Don’t delete the previous thread — I like clean, simple mails but don’t delete that previous thread. How do you expect me to remember your emails amongst all others when you left me with no clue what we were talking about.
• Shorten your Signature — One should avoid those looooooong disclaimers, signature, what-so-ever. Why don’t you just link us to your TOS or your policy. We’ll read if need be. Or make your disclaimer twitterable - 140 characters! That should be short enough to bear.
• No HTML Please — Will you please leave that to companies that sends out newsletter where a HTML one serves OK. An email that can be best viewed with Plain ASCII should never be done in HTML.
• No Word/Powerpoint attachments — Please don’t send me word or powerpoint attachments right away. Ask me! Are we already talking about something that needs Word Docs and Powerpoint files, if not, don’t just shove it up my email.
• Not those SMS text — SMS text are best left to Mobile Phones, please don’t bring them to email.
• No forwards Please — Please update yourself; people no longer want those forwards of Virus Hoaxes and other ‘funny forwards’.
• ‘Request Delivery’ is cliche.

I know that most of the points covered above are well known to people who’ve been online for quite a while. I hope this makes the new users learn the tricks faster and be more useful to people around them.