Sensible Email Exchange

Sensible Email Exchange. I suppose I could also have billed this talk “Eliminating Email Embarrassment” or “Email, the self immolation machine.”

Abe Lincoln got it right: “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.”

In 1850, if you wanted to embarrass yourself you started with a letter, essay or speech. You haggled with a printer and persuaded him to publish your masterpiece. Then you ran back to your cabin and fortified the rough hewn walls against broadside rebuttals. Since 1971 when Ray Tomlinson(1) wrote the first email program, it’s become a do-it-yourself business. Compose, publish and mortify in one click.

Here then, is a list of ways to embarrass yourself with email. I say “you” because, though I’ve committed almost all of these crimes, I’ve atoned. You’ve seen top ten lists? This one goes to 11.

Peccadillo Primero
Refusal to douse the flame. A “flame” is an angry rant that is emotionally out of proportion to an ongoing conversation. If you don’t really mean to say that I’m a toadying dilettante with an inverted napoleon complex, add a smiley(2) . If you’re being ironical add a winky. If you pound out more than two words in ALL-CAPS then you’re yelling, tone it down.

Sin Segundo
Holding spell check in check. If your email-software doesn’t have a spell checker slap those gems into a tool that does before you blast them through the ether. Use your Funk and Wagnall’s. Use small words. Use your head.

The Third Transgression
Imagining I recognize your email address. Put your real name in the body of the text. If your address is jeffz217@hotmail.com(3) then you’d better sign the subject line too or find yourself filed under Viagra sales.

Fourth Fatal Flaw
Confusing the ethics of CC and BCC. Know the difference and use BCC. Back when my grandparents ruled the earth Blind CC was considered unethical. If you’re plotting to stab someone in the back it still is. However, if you have really convinced yourself that a large group of people will spin off their swivel chairs when they hear this awesome blond lawyer joke that they’ve certainly never heard before, use the BCC line. Sharing my email address with 100 of your friends and acquaintances, that’s unethical.

Fifth Felony
Annoying Attachments. Are you really sending me a movie in email? Have you asked how fast my machine is? Am I sharing a voice line on a 128 baud modem? Odds are your material is available on the internet. If so, send me a link instead of a file. If you send a fat file and the bits add two pounds to my hand-held, one of us is going to have a problem.

The Sixth Slip
Abundant Abbreviations: IANAL but IMHO you should 86 the TLAs (4). ’nuff said.

The Seventh Malevolence
Ill considered and morphing subject lines. Choose the subject carefully and then leave it alone. If the subject is “re:” or “about your message” your email is going into my trash faster than a moldy cheese. Once you’ve got a personalized, relevant subject, leave it alone until the conversation is over. This is how I can group email together and avoid…

The Eighth Disgrace
Continuously Quoted Conversations. Don’t repeat our whole conversation in every response. And for pity sake, if you just can’t help yourself, don’t bury new information in the earlier sections of the dialogue. I don’t want to review our life histories each time someone throws a sentence onto the stack.

Crime Number Nine
Forgetting about spam. Spam is unsolicited email. Like an envelope from Publisher’s Clearinghouse but it’s usually sent from a disposable address. You can be mistaken for a spammer by picking an email address like jeffz217@hotmail.com. You give aid and sustenance to professional spammers by papering the neighborhood with CC list contents. And yes, with a few injudicious forwards you yourself can become an amateur spammer.

The Penultimate Perpetration
Assuming email is private. It isn’t. It’s a postcard in the mailroom. It can be read on your machine, at your provider’s machine, at my provider’s machine and by unintended viewers at my machine. It can also be read in a forward from any of the above. You’re talking on a party-line.

And the Last Lapse
Forwarding Chain Mail. Bill Gates is not sending you money. You cannot further World Peace by forwarding some “worldwide meditation moment” alert. You won’t save a life by warning all your friends that flashing their headlights causes gang violence. Chain mail is a tool for professional spammers to harvest email addresses. If a message says “forward this to ten people in your address book”, break the chain. I promise, pianos will not rain from the sky and woodchucks will not eat your offspring.

None of this advice transcends common sense. But email is so easy that it can get fired off before the common sense kicks in. So do us both a favor, take a minute. Don’t embarrass yourself.

1. SNDMSG, developed for ARPANET, was the first network Email.
2. or :-)
3. I don’t actually know this guy. Don’t send him mail.
4. I am not a lawyer but in my humble opinion you should kill the three letter acronyms.