by Bonnie Christiano

Created on: June 29, 2010

E-mail is the communication method of choice for much of the modern world.  I use e-mail in my personal and professional life.  Sometimes I wonder how people functioned before there was e-mail.  Now that the written word is available electronically, there are certain best practices and etiquette that should be followed.  The disregard for these guidelines can be somewhat irritating, to say the least. 

WRITING IN ALL CAPS!  Fine, if you are intending to yell at someone.  But if you don’t mean to yell, please turn the Caps Lock off.  You can’t hear the tone of someone’s voice when reading an e-mail so seeing all capital letters can cause miscommunication.  Sometimes you can even tell when someone inadvertently uses caps because the first letter of every sentence is lower case.  Just pay attention to what you are writing.  I understand that you may not notice until you finish a long, involved e-mail.  At least acknowledge that you have made a mistake so the recipient doesn’t stop speaking to you, in e-mail or in life. 

writing in all lower case!  I have to say that I am absolutely guilty of this in my personal e-mails but I know it can really get on people’s nerves.  I will leave it at that and hope that I don’t cause offense by continuing my lower case monologues.  Of course this is never appropriate in formal, profession e-mails. 

Excessive Forwards.  I am not opposed to getting forwarded e-mails with funny or cute jokes.  What I don’t enjoy is when I get constant forwards that are cheesy, or offensive, or just plain inappropriate.  And those e-mails where you have to forward to five friends in an hour or you will have bad luck for the rest of your life!  Forget about it.  I never forward those on because I know how annoying they can be.  Most of the time, I don’t even open them.  Delete! 

Which brings me to my next pet peeve, deleting before reading.  Now, I think that can be acceptable with meaningless forwards.  But when I send a work related e-mail to someone at work and don’t get a response, I may check my sent mail to see if it was opened.  I am not sure if everyone has the ability to see the status of a sent e-mail but my work e-mail system tracks the state of every piece of mail.  I can see if it was delivered and received, if it was opened and deleted, or

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