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pleased to hear from you ( a REAL email at last amongst all that junk).

5) Unless you are writing to a fellow teenager, use real words. Do u hve NE idea how annoying it is trying 2 Dcode txt spk? If you are writing to a colleague or client it is unprofessional, lazy and can lead to misinterpretation and misunderstanding.

6) There is no substitute for reading through your email before you hit "send". We've all done it - poor spelling, repeated sentences, omitted sentences, missing words. I know how hard it is to proofread something you've written yourself (and I'm sure that you can find several typos in this article), but often a quick read through will pick out the most glaring errors and ensure your message makes sense.

7) Remember - when you write something down it is important that it makes sense grammatically. If you are in conversation with someone face to face, or on the phone, you have other clues about the meaning of what is being said and if you don't understand you can say so. These clues don't exist in an email and what might seem obvious to you might be gobbledegook to the recipient.

8) Learn to manage your inbox. Not all emails need a reply - but if they do try to answer immediately. Otherwise that important message sinks further and further down your inbox until it is no longer visible and you simply forget to respond. Once you have replied, or read the email, decide if it needs to be kept. If it does, file it in an appropriate sub-folder. This is good practice - it removes emails that have been read and dealt with from your inbox, but keeps them as a record in an appropriate and easily findable place.

9) Back up and archive old emails. Older emails can be backed up and removed from your computer. Retain the backup copies in case you need to refer to them but keep your email software easily manageable by only keeping relevant up to date emails on your computer.

Just a little time and thought put into your handling and management of emails will reap dividends in terms of time and sanity. Do as you would be done by and soon others will follow your example.

Oh yes - one final thing. NEVER forward those shock, horror warnings of terrible computer viruses. They are all fakes.

Learn more about this author, Carol Smith.
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