Email Best practice

Nowadays, e-mail is used by just about everyone. It is now a part of our daily life and is a replacing oral communication. But unlike oral communication, your correspondant doesn't see your mimics or can't hear the tone you are using and thus e-mail communication may lead to misunderstandings. This document covers for you the top tips for e-mail etiquette that everyone needs to be aware of and follow.

General best practices

Do not type in all caps
Do not leave the Subject: field blank
Always start your email with greetings
Refrain from formatting your email with colored text and background colors or images in your daily communications. Just send your email in plain text!
Never expose your contact’s addresses to strangers!
Never give out phone numbers or personal information without confirming you are communicating with a reputable party. Never give out personal contact information of others without their specific permission to do so.
Do not use Return Receipt Request (RR) for each and every email you send because you like “knowing” when someone opens your email
If you receive a nasty email - do not respond immediately - if at all
Keep in mind that all private email is considered to be copyrighted by the original author
Always minimize, compress or “zip” large files before sending
Always spell check your email, proofread for errors
Always end your emails with "Thank you," "Sincerely," "Best regards"

e-mail

Subject

Start your email with brief and concise Subject: which accurately portrays the content of your email. The Subject: field is not the place to ask questions or to contain your only comments while you send a blank email. You also want to refrain from using an old email message and hitting reply to type about a new subject because you didn’t add your contact’s email address to your address book. That is viewed not only as lazy but as inconsiderate for the person on the other side because the Subject: field does not reflect the new conversation.

Text

Always start your email with "Hello", "Hi", "Dear" or whatever you are comfortable with and works for you and the name of the person you are emailing. Use a greeting that reflects your personality. When you make a phone call you always say "Hello" to the person who picks up the phone. A little idle chit-chat asking how the other person is, what is new, etc. then ensues. I am not suggesting that you have paragraphs of senseless chit-chat before you get to your point, just that you show some interest and courtesy to the person on the other side included within a nice greeting.

You may think doing so to be trivial or time-wasting when online, however, this is how a civilized society communicates with one another and how relationships are built. Little touches such as this will ensure the recipient looks forward to seeing your name in their mailbox. To just blurt out your demands or questions without a greeting comes off as demanding or bossy.

You want to think of your email as a serious communication tool, not an excuse to forget about being courteous or friendly. To insinuate you are better than others or that your time is too valuable to spend on the simple formalities mentioned here, is to be perceived as not having consideration for the human being on the other end of the pipeline.

Also don't forget to verify the spelling and the grammar. Use what you learned in junior high school and don't forget the use of the F7 key.

Recipients

Make sure to differentiate the recipients and to use the correct fields (To, CC, BCC)

To: This contains the addresses of the primary recipients, from whom you would expect a response
CC: stands for “carbon copy”. This contains the addresses of recipients you want to know about the message, but are not directly involved. It's mainly for people that do not need to act or reply to the message, but to keep them informed.
BCC: stand for “Blind carbon copy”. They are used to send a copy of an email to a recipient without any of the other recipients being aware that the Bcc’d recipient got a copy of the email.

Attachments

As the netiquettes describes it Always minimize, compress or “zip” large files before sending. Now even compressed some files are still too big to be sent by email. Consider that over 6MB the email can't be sent and then use a solution such as yousendit or rapidshare.
If you are sending an email with a large attachment to your colleagues, prefer the usage of your file server and put a link in your email instead.