Netiquette
E-mail is a (relatively) new form of communication, and so it is developing
its own conventions and forms of etiquette. Just as, when you place a call on
a telephone, you expect the person on the other end to answer without screaming
in your ear, so does e-mail have some forms you should learn. The following
comments should (I hope) help you become a graceful & friendly e-mail user.
SHOUTING
An e-mail message that is typed in all caps is considered the equivalent of
shouting over the network. So if you don't want people who receive your messages
to think that you are mad at them, use those upper *and* lower case keys.
WAS THAT FUNNY, OR SHOULD MY FEELINGS BE HURT?
Be careful with humor and sarcasm in your messages. Without the voice inflections
and body language of personal communications, it is easy for an e-mail remark
meant to be funny to be misinterpreted. Subtle humor tends to get lost on e-mail,
so take steps to make sure that the people who get your messages realize you
are trying to be funny. The net has developed a symbol called the smiley face.
It looks like :-) (i.e., colon-hyphen-end parenthesis) and points out sections
of articles with humorous intent. No matter how broad the humor or satire, it
is safer to remind people that you are being funny.
NEVER FORGET THAT THE PERSON ON THE OTHER SIDE IS HUMAN.
Because you only see your screen when you are writing e-mail, it is easy to
forget that there are people "out there," receiving your words. Always
write as though you were addressing people to their faces. Try to imagine the
people to whom you are writing, so that you come across as the reasonable human
that you are and that the world needs to keep us all in peace.
WHEN YOU RECEIVE A MESSAGE THAT SEEMS OBNOXIOUS
The points above ask you to think about the people you send messages to now
think about them as people you receive messages from. Given what I've written
above, please give other people the benefit of the doubt when you receive an
e-mail message that seems rude or obvious or redundant. You can always write
back a polite message that says, "Oh dear, I'm sure you didn't mean it,
but your message made me feel bad"÷and you can always choose simply
to ignore a message. But if a message does upset you for whatever reason, try
not to say anything to others you would not say to them in person in a room
full of people. But always stop and catch your breath before you respond; wait
for a while to respond, so that you respond reasonably and responsibly, and
so that you increase the good (and not the bad) feelings in the world.
THE SUBJECT OF THE MESSAGE
Once you start receiving a lot of mail (if you decide to subscribe to some e-mail
lists, you could start receiving hundreds of messages a day), you will want
to be able to sort through it quickly; there will be times when you will be
glad to be able to delete messages without having to read them. You will thus
appreciate it immensely when people are clear & concise in the subject lines
of their messages, because then you will be able to tell from the subject lines
whether you need to read the message÷and people will then also be glad
when *you* are clear & concise.
DON'T OVERDO SIGNATURES, PLEASE!
Signatures at the end of your messages (those lines with favorite quotes together
with your name and affiliation) are nice÷but please don't overdo them.
Signatures can tell the world something about you, but a signature that is longer
than the message itself is considered to be in bad taste by most Internet users.
The main purpose of a signature is to help people locate you, not to tell your
life story. Every signature should include at least your return e-mail address.
BUT, AFTER ALL THOSE WARNINGS, PLEASE DO BE CREATIVE!
There are lots of ways to be expressive with the limited characters of your
keyboard. One of the comments above shows how to make a smiley face, and
you will quickly learn how people mark words *to give them emphasis* or use
abbreviations of often used expressions (IMHO, "in my humble opinion," for
example). Most people don't expect you to use perfect spelling in informal e-mail
messages (although, given that we are a department supposed to be helping people
prepare to be professional communicators, you might consider how misspellings
reflect not just on you), and the rules of grammar tend to be a bit looser in
e-mail (but with the same caveat as before). Still, there is plenty of room
for you to experiment with using e-mail to build thoughtful & energetic
friendships and professional relationships.
Parts of this document were taken from materials originally created by Mark
Moraes, Chuq Von Rospach, and Gene Spafford; the original text could be found
at http://nice.ethz.ch/Usenet/netiquette_engl.html,
as of 7/21/00.