By Hayleigh Gowans
Staff Writer
In this day and age, the occurrence of a pen-to-paper letter is much less frequent and has been replace by its electronic equivalent — the email. While email provides a quick way to get in touch with friends, family and colleagues, there are some things users should keep in mind to make sure they are minding their manners.
Electronic mail — more commonly known email —has been around for decades. Ray Tomlinson, an Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) contractor for Bolt Beranek and Newman, is credited with inventing email in 1972, though there were instances of people using more basic systems to leave notes to users of the same computer before. Tomlinson came up with a way to send messages between computers on the same network, and created the basic email address format that we still use today, which is “name-of-user@name-of-computer.” Now, there are countless email providers who allow people a platform to get in touch with others all around the world.
According to research by the Radicati Group, the projected total number of business and consumer emails sent and received per day will reach 269 billion and the number of worldwide email users will top 3.7 billion in 2017. Suffice to say whether it’s for work or pleasure, a good majority of the world has access to email.
One thing I wanted to address — with the fast paced nature of email, how do you decide to keep a correspondence formal versus informal? Emails tend to be more informal in style, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be well-written and thoughtful.
My basic rule is that it’s best to keep some sort of formality in all emails. Of course, you don’t need to address your best friend “Dear Ms. Jane Doe,” or end an email to a sibling with “Sincerely,” but the basic structure of a letter — address, body and sign off, should be kept intact to allow them to respond in an organized way.
In a professional setting, I think it’s a good habit to try to keep formality in your emails, especially when addressing someone who you have not met in-person or do not have a close working relationship with.
Here are some tips for being a polite email user that I’ve found in various sources:
- Keep you subject lines short but informative. You’re much more likely to get someone to open your email if it states something like “Meeting time changed,” rather than “Information for you.”
- Think twice before you “reply all.” Especially in a professional environment, there are a lot of times when you’ll be sent a mass email. The only reason to “reply all” and send your response back to the multiple people who received the same email is if your information is new or pertinent to the subject of the original email.
- Proofread all of your emails, and if possible read it out loud to make sure it makes sense and conveys the right tone.
- If you attach a document, make sure to let the reader know you’ve sent something you’d like them to pay attention to. The best way to do this is state, “Attached is a picture of the event we attended last week.” Also, don’t open attachments from users you do not know as they have the risk to be spam or a virus.
- Don’t use informal way to address people. While you may get to be informal with your friends, you wouldn’t want to send an email starting with “Yo boss,” to your actual boss.
- When in doubt about how to address someone — especially if you’re unsure of their gender or pronoun preference — it’s best to just state their name with a comma.
- If you’re picking a personal email address, make sure it is appropriate. A good rule of thumb is to make it something you wouldn’t be embarrassed to say to your grandmother.
- Add the recipient’s email address after your draft the letter as this ensures your don’t accidentally send a half-written email. Also, double-check that you are sending it to the right person and that your auto-fill address book didn’t select the wrong recipient.
- Keep in mind emails are easily forwarded or screenshot, so try to keep private information or gossip out of your inbox. It could easily come back to bite you.
Overall, email is a great tool to connect people all over the world. It can be used both professionally and personally, and with it being such a large part of many people’s lives, it’s best to keep etiquette in mind.
If you have an etiquette question or would like to submit a topic for discussion, please email me at [email protected]. Until next time, mind your modern manners.
