Email and Netiquette

ACTIVITY 3

To: Sarah@Work.Net
CC: Jim@Work.Net

From: Bill@Work.Net

Subject: Training Trip Funds

Sarah and Jim,
I'm very interested in going on the training trip discussed in the meeting today. Do either of you know who would be the appropriate person to speak to regarding the funds for it? Thank you.

Sincerely,

Bill

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ACTIVITY 1

# Timeliness of replies
-Try to respond to your email as quickly as possible. This enables us to take full advantage of the immediate response time that is enabled by email. Not responding to a co-worker or superior for an extended amount of time may not only hinder the projects growth, but it may also foster grudge feelings. These can be easily avoided by timely, accurate responses.


# Use of confidential, sensitive, and private information
-Under no circumstances should you discuss confidential, sensitive, or private information via email. Email can be tracked. Email can be saved. Email can be subpoenaed in a court of law. Do not disclose personal information that you do not want others to see in an email. Most importantly, avoid discussing company secrets, failures, errors, and other such matters that would pose injury to the company in court.


# Subject lines
-Subject lines should be clear and concise. A proper subject line enables the receiver to have a general idea of what the email is about before opening it. Further, having a clear subject line enables the email to be more easily retrieved later. However, it is important to remember to keep the subject short and simple. Try to avoid writing sentences as subjects.


# Use of capitals and lowercase letters
-Capital and lowercase letters should be used in a professional sense. Avoid sending emails typed in all capital letters, or even sentences in all capital letters. Having all capital letters causes the reader to feel that you are yelling. If you wish to make something stand out due to importance, than use bold, italics, or underline. Further, the first letter of the first word of the sentence should be capitalized, as well as other words which fall into the proper noun category.


# Sentence length
-Use appropriate sentence length. Try to avoid long, run-on sentences. For a general rule of thumb, if you have to ask if it is too long, then separate it into two separate sentences. Our communication goal is clear, concise, efficient, effective.

# Attachments
-Make a note in the body of the email that there is an attachment below. This will help remind your receiver to download the attachment. Also, label your attachments clearly. Ex. If you are attaching the excel spreadsheet for the third quarter earnings, have it saved as "Earnings3Quarter.xls". This helps both the sender, and the receiver, to stay organized in their email and their document files.

# Tone and flaming
-There should be no flaming in the workplace. Remember to always approach your co-workers with constructive criticism if you believe they are failing at some part of the job. If find yourself absolutely aggravated, then write out the email in a word document to vent it off and then delete it. Flaming is not tolerated and is a obstruction in our path of effective communication.

REFERENCES:
http://www.albion.com/netiquette/corerules.html
http://www.entrepreneur.com/magazine/businessstartupsmagazine/1997/november/14740.html