Email Etiquette

Computer Care: Forward e-mail with courtesy, with the caps lock off, please


By Arthur Glazer
arthur@glazerthepctech.com



POSTED: February 19, 2011 1:00 a.m.


E-mails reach my inbox asking me for advice, sharing humor and selling both Viagra and breast implants. But that's OK; I can deal with it. What annoy me are those who inform me of impending doom, should I not forward their e-mail to 16 people. Worse, are the ones that have me watching for a surprise after all 16 are forwarded.

Call me a skeptic, but I don't want to bother 16 friends to chance seeing a butterfly or kaleidoscope.

Let's not forward chain letters. Most are hoaxes anyway. Bill Gates will not give you $250 for passing on his e-mail. Check out snopes.com should you have doubts about a letter you got.

There are unwritten rules of etiquette when it comes to e-mail. Not sending forwards like I mentioned is one of those rules.

Grammar counts; so does spelling. I am not ROFL (rolling on the floor laughing) or anxious to talk about it IRL (in real life). What are we, 12 years old? So let's stop with the silly acronyms. And omit the smileys, too. OK?

NOT ONLY IS THIS DIFFICULT TO READ, but it is considered shouting to type in caps in the online world. Check to see if your Caps Lock is engaged before typing a message.

Most e-mail clients have spell-checkers, even thesauruses. If you use Firefox or Chrome to check your web mail, each has add-ons to assist. All I have to do is highlight a word and right-click on it to learn more about it. There are no excuses for spelling errors anymore.

Punctuation is part of writing, like it or not. Look at the following sentence to realize how misplaced or omitted punctuation can change the meaning of a sentence. At worst, it makes it hard to read:

Woman without her man is nothing.

A man might place commas to have it read: Woman, without her man, is nothing.

A woman may have it say: Woman! Without her, man is nothing.

The same words with different punctuation yield a different meaning.

Word choices require careful thought as well. Affect (a verb) differs from effect (a noun). "It's" is a contraction, while "its" is possessive.

If you must forward an e-mail, for whatever reason, follow these simple rules. Delete the "FWD" from the subject line, all of them. Some ISPs may not send it with that prefix, considering it as spam.

Also delete the header with all of the addresses of the ones to get that e-mail before you. I get some with an entire page of headers on it.

If your e-mail program has a BCC field (Blind Carbon Copy), use it. This helps keeps recipients' addresses private.

Also delete those >>>>>> you often see in a forwarded e-mail. Does anyone know what they are called? There are some good, free programs that will take care of those as well as ill-formatted e-mails, getting rid of extraneous spaces and line breaks.

Do a Google search for e-mailStripper, eCleaner or StripMail. They are all easy to use.

Many viruses and malware get spread via e-mail. Check to see if your anti-virus and anti-malware programs scan both incoming and outgoing e-mail. This will protect you and your recipients. Look in the settings area of the utilities to make changes.

If you send photos as attachments to e-mails, consider their size. Know that megapixel images are only necessary if you are going to print the picture. Otherwise, as attachments they show up as huge photos taking longer to send and receive (maybe even being blocked) and fill up your recipient's entire page.

Use free utilities like the online ResizR or see if your photo imaging software can reduce the size of an image. Remember to do a "Save as" if you choose the latter method. You don't want to over-write an original image. You may want to print it one day.

Whether sending photos, videos or audio, if you have a large file to share (again, there is the possibility of the ISP blocking it), consider a file-sharing utility online. There are many you can use for free.

Some will let you try it with no charge; others remain free, but only allow one file at a time. Some have a limit to the size of the files you can share.

Check out MailBigFile, a free service for only one recipient.

There is also Pando, but watch the installer for extra add-ons you may not want.

They work by you sending your friends a link instead of a file — quick and easy for both of you.

The bottom line is consideration. Keep e-mails neat, clean and avoid large attachments. They will be easier to read, especially with proper spelling and punctuation.

Texting while mobile is dangerous and illegal. So is sending e-mail.

Remember, love may not be forever, but e-mails are. Your ISP has copies of everything you send- just so you know.

Now, I want you to send this column to 16 of your friends.

Arthur Glazer is a freelance writer and computer technician in Gainesville. His column appears biweekly. Arthur welcomes your computer questions and ideas for future columns.