Email Etiquette Tips
- Always use a subject line. Make them meaningful. Generally, they should be kept to a maximum of 5-7 words. Subject lines are used by people to determine if they want to read your message and are used to file the email for future reference.
- Use only plain text when sending email to a large group of recipients. Many email programs do not have the ability to read formatted (i.e. bold, italicized, or colored) text. When this happens, the recipient may have difficulty understanding your message.
- Keep your email messages short. Use short sentences, lines, and paragraphs. Where possible, when making announcements, place the information on a web site and refer the recipients to the web site for the details.
- In most instances, normal rules of grammar apply when sending email. Asterisks, all capital letters, all lowercase letters, white space and punctuation can be used to relay emotion.
- When replying to a message, include enough of the original message to provide a context. It may not be necessary to include the entire original message in your reply.
- When replying to a message sent to a list, don't reply to "all recipients" unless they all need your reply.