Email Etiquettes

Hello,

Almost all of us using Internet, have used Emails for communication. But when it comes to etiquette of email usage, I am not sure how many of them know about that. We should do the same to others, what we expect others to do to us. It is applicable even to Emails..

Some of the important Email Rules that you should follow, since email has become the most powerful means of communication online for quite sometime now.

• Keep your mails short and to the point. 
• Use  'To', 'CC' and 'BCC' correctly.  'To' field is for the people for whom the email is directly meant to. 'CC' field is for the people who are not direct recipients and may not need to act on that mail. They are just for the information for those recipients. 'BCC' field is not visible to any of the recipients in the 'TO' and 'CC' field.  Use it only when required and not frequently.
• Use the Subject field for only 'Subject' of the message. Don't write an essay in the subject field.  Reading the Subject alone should help the reader about the essence of email content.
• Use 'Reply to all' very sensibly.  Not all of them in the list will be target of your response most of the time.
• Use a meaningful Subject. If you are starting a new Thread of mail, dont use an existing email to start that conversation.  That mail may not have the right Subject.
• Limit the use of Email Stationaries.  Most of the them are just space wasters and can confuse the reader sometimes.
• Dont use all Capital letters in the email content.  It actually means you are shouting at the receiver.
• Compress the attachments before sending.   Most of the compressors will reduce the size of the attachment to nearly 10% based on the attachment content.  This will save your space, receivers space and the network bandwidth.
• Its preferrable to use 'BCC' instead of 'CC' when you are sending the mail to a large number of receivers.
• When forwarding emails to someone else, ensure if you need the attachments that came with the original message.  
• When using the images in the signature or in any part of the email, ensure that you are using JPEG, GIF or any other compressed format.  Using BMP files will actually increase the email size.
• Always Spell-check your email before sending. 
• Avoid using Abbreviations in Official emails.
• Use the correct Salutations.  

     Here are some points on OFFICIAL email etiquettes that I received from one of my friend. These will also help.  

1) The font of mail should be Verdana and font size should be 9.5 or 10.

2) The mail should have a Pyramid Structure i.e. it should contain:

*         Situation: What's the current situation is
*         Action items: What you expect from the reader of the mail to-do
*         Information: The information you want to give to the reader
*         Conclusion: Conclude with a Thank You.

3) For writing use only Black or Blue color. For highlighting purpose make the word bold. Avoid using Red color as Red signifies danger, so use it when urgent.

4) For greetings in mail:

*         For Americans: use Hi
*         For Europeans: use Hello
*         For Asians: use Dear

To be more formal we could use Dear Mr. /Ms. followed by Last name or Full name. We should not use Dear Mr. /Ms. followed by First name alone.

5) We should not put '/' in greetings like Hi X/Y. Instead we should say Hi X and Y.

6) We should not use 'Thanks and Regards'. Instead we should say:

Thank you
Regards


7) For requesting something we should not use can, instead we should use could.

8) We should not write 'Please find the attached file' because the reader does not have to find or search for the file in the mail it's    already there. So instead we should write
     'The file has been attached for your reference'.

9) We should not use sentences like 'As per your mail' because 'per' is used only with units like per Kg etc. Instead we should write 'According to your mail'.

10) We should use parallel structure. Parallelism enables readers to read documents more efficiently. For e.g. The analysis will include planning, organizing, dividing and assessment    
       (Instead assessment we should write Assessing) of turnaround functions.

11) In our mails we often write 'Please revert back'. Instead we should only write 'Please revert'.

12) For the Signature in mail, if we are sending to people in our company only then we should not write our company name in the signature because they already know that we are part of the same company but if we are sending mail to an external party like client etc then we should write our company name in the signature because there we have to brand our company name in front of others. 

I will update more if I come across anything additionally.

Keep Visiting.