The Sins of the Email

By Dirk J. Hedlund
Originally Posted January 27, 2005 (Updated June 30, 2005)

    Over the years I've tried to educate the masses, but it seems I need to sit down with everyone in the world individually and teach them how to use email.  Too many people are polluting my Inbox with mindless garbage.  I'm not talking about spam, either.  I'm talking about plain old JUNK mail.   I've finally decided, once and for all, to let everyone in on the rules.  Here is my tongue-in-cheek guide to proper email etiquette.  (Maybe some of you can relate, or maybe this is all in the "news to you" category.)

    Rule #1: Quit forwarding that junk to everyone you know.  I don't have time to read junk.  I bet you don't either.  Yet, every time you get a message that says to "forward to everyone you know," you do it, don't you?  Well, cut it out.  Here's a rule of thumb you can use to gauge whether or not to forward an email message:  If it says "forward this message to..." followed by any number of persons, up to and including everyone you know, it's junk.  Just delete it.  Oh, and if you think by forwarding a message it will bring you good luck, money, or any other reward... It won't.  If you think NOT forwarding a message will bring you the opposite, it won't.  And by the way, we aren't children and we don't live on a playground, so the "forward this if you like me" type messages won't fly, either.  (Between you and me, when I see FW: at the beginning of a message, I assume it's just junk.  It almost always is.)  Added: Not forwarding an email does not make you less patriotic.  It does not cause others to question your religious convictions or your moral character.  (On the other hand, forwarding a message MIGHT.)

    Rule #2: Learn how to use CC: and BCC:.  Okay, so you've chosen to ignore the previous rule, or perhaps you have a "valid" reason for sending junk messages to a lot of people.  That's fine, but WE don't want to see all of those other names and email addresses, and maybe we SHOULDN'T see them.  (Do you want your grandma's email address eventually ending up on a spammer's hot list?  I don't want MY personal email address out there for the world to see.)  Hide them!  You don't have to brag to the whole world that you have a lot of email address in your contact list.  We get it.  Just about every email client has blocks for CC: (carbon copy) and BCC: (blind carbon copy).  When you're forwarding email that fits in the "junk" category, add recipients to the BCC: list.  That way they will get your precious message, but their email address is hidden from everyone else.

    Rule #3: Don't forward headers when it isn't necessary.  Once again, you've decided not to follow the previous rules, and you're forwarding a message.  I usually don't want to see a list of everyone that received the message before you sent it to me.  Do everyone a favor, edit out the extraneous bits.  I'm wearing out the little wheel on my mouse because of all the extra scrolling you're making me do, not to mention what you're doing to my carpal tunnel syndrome.

    Rule #4: Drop those >'s while you're at it.  What's harder to read than a message filled with >, >>, >>> and so on?  Answer: Not much.  Delete all of those and the extra carriage returns too.  Make it easier for the recipient to read your message.  If it's too much work to delete them all, it's probably a message you shouldn't be forwarding in the first place.  Extra hint: Check out the "find and replace" option, usually found in your "Edit" menu.  Use it to replace all the junk symbols with nothing, and clean up that message in a flash.

    Rule #5: Spell check.  Who has an email program that doesn't have a spell check function?  Anyone?  Even the web-based Hotmail service has a spell check option, along with a dictionary and thesaurus.  There's no excuse for messages with grotesque spelling mistakes.  Okay, spell check programs aren't perfect, but they're better than nothing.  Fool people into thinking you know what you're doing.

    Rule #6: Punctuate.  Sentences are designed to have a beginning and an end.  Throw a period in there once in a while, if for no other reason that just to give the reader a chance to take a breath.  Give your old English teacher a thrill and throw in a comma now and then, too.  One long, run-on sentence is hard to read and even harder to comprehend.  Oh yeah, unless your message is very short, you should break up your sentence with some paragraph formatting.  It's the latest thing.

    Rule #7: Don't send HUGE attachments.  Maybe that should be "Don't send attachments at all," but I don't think that works for too many people, so I had to scale it back a notch.  Some people need to be clued in on file sizes that are appropriate for email.  If you have to ask "What is the email size limit for your ISP?" then you're sending files that are too big.  Snapshots are a common problem here.  I think the pictures of your new baby (or whatever) are cool, but I'm not planning on printing gigantic high definition posters of them.  Resize snapshots down to smaller sizes, unless you ARE sending them to someone to have them printed.  Of course, you could always post the pictures to a website and just send me the link, but I'm probably asking for too much again, huh?  If you send me a 600 MB movie file, I may just hunt you down and squash you like a bug.  Bonus: Check out http://www.yousendit.com.  This service lets you send big files without sending them through email.

    Rule #8: Give it a GOOD subject line.  Here's an example of a BAD subject line: "RE: RE: RE: FW: FW: Fwd: Joke"  I'm not sure WHAT that message is about.  It may, or may NOT, have something to do with a joke.  At this point, it could be about your poor aunt Mildred's chronic bad breath, or your new puppy's potty training habits, or anything else.  If it doesn't have anything to do with the original message, change it.  Make it relevant to the message.  DO NOT leave it blank!  (Just between you and me, many spam filters delete messages with blank subject lines.)

    Rule #9: Don't forward messages as attachments.  Now, I'm not saying don't forward an attachment.  If it's appropriate, that's okay.  I'm talking about forwarding a message as an attached file to someone else.  Some email programs seem to want to do this, but don't let them.  It messes with antivirus software, and forces us to save the attached file and open it separately.  The worst are the messages with files within files, nested together like those little Russian dolls.   When I run into something like that, I'm very likely to give up and just delete your message without ever reading it.

    Rule #10: Stick to plain-text messages.  I know, you really like your cool background picture, and that font color really is something special, but did you know that not everyone sees your message the same way?  What you think is a piece of art, may just look like random, unreadable garbage to someone else.  If you're like me, you force the message to display in plain text anyway, to avoid web bugs, phishing exploits, and other dangerous code that might be embedded in an email message.  My paranoia aside, your "pretty" email doesn't look the same to me as it does to you.  You're just making your message bigger so it can potentially be less readable to the people you're sending it to.  Everyone can read plain-text, try using that instead.  Save the other stuff for a web page or something.

    Dirk Hedlund is a computer consultant with Klatt & Associates, CPA, PC.  He can be reached at dirk.hedlund@klatt-assoc.com , or by calling (515) 232-5642.