The first item on our list is the angry e-mail. E-mail provides a crucial benefit over face-to-face communication: you have a chance to carefully choose your words and compose an eloquent message. But e-mail can also inspire a confidence that may be lacking in live communication.

This can lead to the angry e-mail, and sometimes it’s all too easy to write things you would never say. There’s probably a reason you would never say those things, so it’s important to keep that in mind before pushing that Send button. Once you do, there’s no way to get that message back.

So if you’re angry, upset, or irritated in any way, it may be best to step away from the computer for a break. That way, you will likely cool off or relax and have a better frame of mind; after all, you probably don’t want to burn any important bridges.

Next, let’s talk about the plague of electronic communication: the forwarded chain letter. We’ve all gotten these and may have even been tempted to pass them on at some point. I mean, let’s face it: if we pass that message on to at least ten friends, we could suddenly inherit millions of dollars. And if we don’t, it could mean bad luck for the next seven years. But that is more than likely not going to be the case.

Chain letters were annoying enough when they arrived as paper mail, but in that form they cost money to send. With electronic mail, which is mostly free, chain letter forwards are even more prevalent, and just as bothersome.

Some of these messages make you feel guilty if you ignore them, or even threaten karmic disasters if you fail to pass them on to a specified amount of recipients. And then there those that imply technical catastrophes if you don’t click on something or delete a certain file. Please, friends: don’t fall for those.

So, you might ask: what is the best way to handle these unwanted messages?  First of all, delete the message, especially if it is the kind that threatens technical disaster or asks you to click on a link. Second: if they are coming from a relative or close friend, ask them gently to not include you on the list for those e-mails unless they directly know the source.  Remember, this may be the only entertainment dear Aunt Sally has.

Our dear friend, the Cybercouth Tiger, sent a note about a few other aspects of e-mail etiquette that he wanted to share with us. Here is what he had to say:

One of my avocations is playing stand-up bass in an amateur jazz ensemble. We have six musicians in the band, but using electronic calendaring is impractical for us.  As a result, our rehearsals and gigs are scheduled via e-mail messages. This would be quite acceptable but for a few irritating habits of the members in the percussion section. They don’t seem to grasp the concept that only the band member serving as our organizer needs to know if they can or cannot attend a particular date. Being drummers (and in bands, it is always the drummers), they use Reply to All when Reply was all that was needed. We all get enough superfluous e-mail from spammers and bots without getting it from percussionists, too.

On top of this, the stick-wielding troglodytes don’t understand that typing in all capital letters is rude. I often must restrain myself from replying to them (not using Reply to All, of course) that, “ALL CAPS IS FORTISSISSIMO.  PLEASE STOP YELLING!” While the decorum of a jazz band would never allow me to comport myself in such a manner with my band mates, I count it a privilege to be able to help you avoid the percussionists’ errors and harmonize with the groups with which you work.

Thanks for the advice, Cybercouth!

The tips for this week center around these ideas and a few others that will help you avoid behaving like a troglodyte, or any other unsavory character.

• Reply to All With Care – Using the Reply to All feature in Outlook and Notes
• Think Before You Send – Understanding Outlook’s message recall feature
• Don’t Shout – Avoiding the use of all caps
• Unread Letters – Manually marking messages as read or unread in Outlook
• Need a Receipt With That? – Using read receipts in Outlook and Notes
• Break the Chain – Dealing with chain letters in e-mail
• Read it Later – Manually marking messages as read or unread in Windows Mobile

Enjoying these tips?  Have any suggestions for future podcasts?  Stop over and write a review of the podcast on iTunes, or drop us a quick note on Twitter @productiveUcast.

That’s all for this week.  Until next time, remember to make Miss Manners, the Cybercouth Tiger, and Mom proud of your e-mail communication.

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

This week’s edition: “The Cybercouth Tiger Returns.”

It’s been a while since we’ve heard from our friend and loyal listener, the Cybercouth Tiger. Today he joins us with more tips for how you can observe common courtesy when communicating at light speed.

Delighted, as always, to be here. Productive U listeners, I come to you today to present some simple methods for minding your manners in e-mail.

When I was just a cub, my mother instilled in me the most basic elements of good etiquette. I was taught to properly introduce myself when meeting others, to keep my stories brief so as to allow others a chance to participate in the conversation, and to refrain from being a snitch to the others in my streak.

In the cyber world, carelessness will allow you to offend more people faster than ever before, but those simple lessons from my cub days can still be applied to help you avoid doing so.

I pose a conundrum: you receive an e-mail from a business associate (let’s call him James) who proposes a meeting to discuss an exciting opportunity to advance on the corporate ladder. He informally concludes this correspondence with the following statement, “Call me to discuss. -j.” Hands trembling with nervous excitement, you lift the telephone receiver and prepare to dial—but alas, you realize you have no contact information for this individual!

Oh, James. Your pitiful e-mail signature offers nary a method for contacting you; indeed, it lacks even your full name. Loyal listeners, I beseech you: take the time to compose an informative and comprehensive e-mail signature to be appended to your outgoing mail messages. Be sure to incorporate basic identification and contact information such as your full name and the best way to reach you. On a business e-mail account, this should include your telephone number, and a fax number if applicable. Your recipients will thank you, and I will personally applaud your courteous efforts.

Now a word about brevity. While an e-mail signature is clearly beneficial for those messages that require a body of message text, let us now observe how a brief message may not even necessitate a body. In such cases where only a short message needs to be conveyed, consider typing it directly into the subject line, followed by the acronym “EOM.” For those not in the know, this stands for “End of Message.” To your recipients, it means, “Don’t even bother opening this message, since there is nothing more to read.” Once they catch on, however, it will sound much more like, “I’ve extended the courtesy of being so concise as to eliminate the need for you to open this e-mail message. Please use that extra time as you see fit.” I feel compelled to inform you that I’m paraphrasing here; I can only assume they might actually be thinking something similar.

(I elaborate further on the topic of e-mail brevity in a recent letter I sent to the computer support staff at Productive U Podcast. You can read it here.)

While we’re on the subject of subjects, I might add this recommendation: never send an e-mail with a blank subject line. Common features in most e-mail applications include the ability to sort and search for messages according to their subject text. Quickly locating a message with no subject can become quite an ordeal. Do your fellow e-mailers the simple service of including some informative text in the subject line, so that they may properly prioritize and categorize your message.

Lastly, dear listeners, we are far past due for a discussion regarding CC and BCC. Allow me to clarify the purpose of these oft-abused fields.

When you include an e-mail address in the CC field, you are notifying your direct recipients in the To field that others are listening in because this message might also pertain to them. CC should not be used as a means of coercion. I recently observed an instance in which a manager was suddenly CC’d on an e-mail conversation between two co-workers. The intent in this case was to notify the manager of some petty squabble that was arising between the two co-workers. If a referee is required to resolve a dispute, there are proper channels that should be used. If a referee is required to resolve a dispute, there are proper channels that should be used. Don’t simply invite someone’s office superior to the conversation as a mediator.

Similarly, the BCC field should not be used to secretly or sneakily include a recipient on an e-mail message. While it is true that the addresses in this field remain hidden to all recipients, the actual purpose of this feature is to protect the privacy of your recipients when sending an e-mail to a group of people. Wanting to prevent everyone’s e-mail addresses from becoming public property on such messages is an acceptable use of BCC.

I shall now take my leave of you, but you can expect to find me here again. When there is a lapse in cybercouth, the tiger shall pounce! Of course, I prefer to educate rather than pounce, so I will return to share more tips to help you avoid becoming a cyboor. Cheers!

Links

• Create an e-mail signature: Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007
• Show the BCC field: Outlook 2003, Outlook 2007

We’d like to thank the Cybercouth Tiger for sharing his netiquette advice with us, and we’d also like to thank you for listening! If you have any comments for us, feel free to share them at www.productiveUpodcast.com.

Don’t forget to visit us on iTunes! While you’re there, you can write a review of the podcast. Or, see what we’re up to by following us on Twitter @productiveUcast.

See you next time!

Music courtesy of Clayton & Fulcrum

Part of the appeal of e-mailed messages is the quickness with which the information is delivered.  It is fully in keeping with the purpose of an e-mail to get to the conclusion as quickly as possible.  It is not only allowable, but may actually be preferable, to start out by saying that the butler did it.  Placing a summary with the conclusion at the beginning of the message allows the reader to estimate his or her need for the detailed information, prioritize the consumption of the details, absorb the detail more quickly and serves as a useful reminder should the message need to be reviewed at a later date.  There are times when the body of a message should contain only a summary with a conclusion.  Voluminous, detailed information, particularly if proper understanding depends on alignment, may be better as an attachment than in the message itself.  Please keep the conclusion to yourself when others are reading or watching a film, but get to the point quickly in your e-mail messages.

Now, about your little habit of carrying on conversations while in the cinema…

Not only might such a faux pas cause you problems, think about the cognitive dissonance (aka brain buzz) mixed signals can cause for those who give you the gift of their attention. Just as you would behave differently in face to face situations depending on who was present, it is important to manage your multiple on-line personas and the communication that flows through them so that the content and tone is appropriate to the people with whom you are interacting. You might think of each on-line persona as having a specific style of dress. Shorts and a t-shirt on Facebook. Business cas’ or better on LinkedIn. Twitter? Definitely tie dye and faded jeans.

Enjoy being virtually anyone you want to be, but please avoid the cyber crudity of sending mixed signals.

“Who was it?” you ask? Our new-found friend the Cybercouth Tiger, who is constantly on the prowl for bad netiquette.

Mr. Cybercouth writes:

Allow me to introduce myself. I am a fan of the computer support staff at Productive U Podcast and thoroughly enjoy their tips on software and being more productive. I was so ecstatic to read educated but easily understood tips on computing. So I decided to write to them and offer up my advice on the basics of etiquette on the web.

After we discussed this a bit, we decided that my in-depth knowledge of netiquette and background could really help their listeners and readers scratch beyond the surface of social computer acceptability.

You might ask why I am so qualified. Well…

I come from a long lineage of butlers, a special breed that is recognized as the top in the pride of the King’s (of the jungle that is) servants.

Now, if you will allow me the honor, I will do what I can to keep you from being ambushed by your peers and assist you in developing your good manners in your e-mail and on the web.

Sincerely,

Cybercouth

See our post for “Don’t let cyber cool make you cyber crude” for his first tip.