Email Etiquette

Millions of emails are sent every day, and sometimes it feels like we are getting all of them! If you want to annoy your friends less, here are a few ways to make sending emails to your friends a less stressful event for both them and yourself!

1.File sizes. If you are sending images to people of your dog, cat or your latest artwork, don’t forget that some people are still on dial up and it takes a long time to download each attachment they receive. Photos or other files shouldn’t be any larger than 500kb if you can help it, and if you reduce an image to 72dpi (dots per inch) and 6 x 8” in size, it will often be under 100KB. Most camera programs will allow you to resize your images. If they are only for your friends to look at and not print, then 72dpi is fine to look at on your screen. And if you are in the position that one email seems to be blocking the rest from coming through, you can go to www.mail2web.com and type in your email address and password and see all of your emails that are still on your ISP’s server and look at and delete the offending email. Nothing worse than spending half an hour downloading something only to find out it was a silly movie that you didn’t want anyway! See Photoxels for more details.

2.Sending to groups of people. Do you get emails from your friends that include 300 email addresses that you have to scroll through to get to the point of the message? Isn’t it annoying? It can also be dangerous if you or your friends get a virus, it can spread to all those people as well, not to mention that your email address is now broadcast to all and sundry. It is always best when sending an email to lots of people to put your own email address in the To: section, and all of the other emails in the BCC (Blind carbon copy) section. You can get to the BCC by clicking on the CC in your emails if you use Outlook Express. In a lot of mail programs you can also organize your friends and families into groups so you can click on a group and it sends to all in the group at once. But still send them as a blind carbon copy.

3.Dire warnings! I have to say that the Neiman Marcus store never billed any woman $500 for a cookie recipe, the police won’t come if you put your pin number in backwards (you’ll just get shot for your trouble) and Bill Gates is definitely not going to give any of us money by sending on a message. If you get an email about some virus warning or other, the best thing to do is to google the main idea of it. For example put in pin number + reverse and you will get up pages with the helpful names like urbandegends.com and snopes.com. All pages that debunk all of these emails that seem to last for years! It’s an easy way to see if the email warning is for real and save thousands of emails being sent out as a result of you blindly sending it to all of your friends. Plus, some of those sites are pretty funny reading!

4.Finally, the jokes, and those emails that are the equivalent of the chain letter. You know, the one that if you don’t send it on to six more people you will have bad luck/you won’t get good luck/you may die etc. They are just annoying. If you get one just delete it. I’m pretty sure your friends will thank you for not sending it on to them, I know I will!