How to write more effective e-mail

[Jonathan Hutchins]

Originally stolen from an Apple website, used in a FAQ for another list:

  a.. A basic reality of the net is this: the better written a message, the
more likely it is to be read by the other people on the list. Messages that
are difficult to read or understand are thrown away by many readers after a
paragraph or two. If the purpose of being on the list is to communicate with
others, then it's important for you to make the message your opinion is in
as accessible to others as possible.
  b.. If you don't care enough about your message to make it easy to read,
why should anyone bother to read it? Fact is, they won't. And if you don't
care if anyone reads it or not, why are you wasting our time posting it?
  c.. If you include quoted material from previous messages, edit it
ruthlessly. When you respond to a message, quote the relevant part(s) as
part of your message, but only that part. That way we'll all know what
you're referring to, but you won't hide your message in a mass of irrelevant
material.. There will be hundreds of messages on this list, so this practice
will help members track of trains of thought without irritating other list
users who have to wade through pages of excess material that shouldn't be in
your message. Simply including the entire message makes it hard for users to
find your response, it wastes bandwidth on the network and costs people
download time (and therefore money), and it shows a sloppiness in your
postings that makes many people disregard the message. (See "if you don't
care enough..." above).
  d.. DO NOT WRITE IN ALL CAPS. Capital letters is considered yelling on the
net, and is rude.
  e.. If the message you're replying to has a signature attached, delete the
signature. Don't include this kind of text in the reply -- it wastes
bandwidth and makes it that much harder to find your comments.
  f.. Please keep the length of lines in messages posted to the list to no
more than 75 characters. If your mailer doesn't automatically wrap text,
then learn how to do it, or make sure you play typewriter and hit returns at
the end of lines. (if you don't know if your mailer does this, then assume
it doesn't and do it yourself. Or find out how to make it do it for you....)
  g.. Spelling and grammar ARE important. Lots of folks like to think
spelling and grammar aren't important. They're wrong. This is a written
environment, and how you write something is at least as important as what
you say -- because if you say it incoherently or format your message to be
unreadable, nobody will be able to find your comments, or won't bother
trying to decipher them. Bad spelling and bad grammar are signs of laziness
by the poster. And as we've said, if you don't care about your posting
enough to make it as good as you can, why should anyone else care either?
  h.. Keep signatures as short as possible. Five or six lines is okay.
Longer is questionable. Keep your content within good taste so you don't
offend the other members of the list. Ascii art is definitely not
acceptable, unless you can keep it within five lines and still make it
legible (good luck).
  i.. Keep Subject lines relevant. If the topic changes, change the Subject.
  j.. Read all of the replies before replying yourself. Before you post a
response to a message, read the rest of the messages in the discussion that
have arrived in your mailbox. If someone else has already made the comment
you want to make, don't make it again, and please don't post "me, too"
messages. They just waste bandwidth. A message answered doesn't need to be
answered ten times, just once.
  k.. If you don't KNOW the answer, don't GUESS. If you aren't positive what
the answer is, don't speculate or guess. Let someone who does know answer it
instead, or go research the answer. All this does is create confusion and
make it harder for the person asking the question to know they actually have
the right answer. Search engines like www.yahoo.com can easily and quickly
help you verify that what you think is correct actually is. It is better to
leave a question unanswered than to answer it incorrectly.
  l.. If you read the DIGEST and reply to a message in it, CHANGE THE
SUBJECT to match the message you're replying to.
  m.. Ask yourself if it's necessary to post to the entire list. If you
aren't sure, e-mail it privately to the person you're responding to.
  n.. This is a public forum. Never send anything to the list that you don't
want the entire world to see, because it's watching. If you're going to say
something about a person, it's always safer to assume they are on the list,
because if they aren't, a buddy of theirs is. And he'll pass it along. (I
feel silly even saying this, but you'd be surprised how often someone says
something rude on a mailing list about someone else, gets a nasty phone call
from the person they insulted, and then blames US for telling him what was
said... This is a mailing list, not a confessional, and the other list users
are not sworn to secrecy. Even if they were, it wouldn't work. So don't say
anything that you wouldn't say directly to the person, unless you like
getting yelled at.... And even if you do like getting yelled at, save us on
the list the hassle of having to watch. Bloody noses stain the carpet, and
we faint at the sight of blood).
  o.. Humor is in the eye of the beholder. Humor is a very useful and
important part of network communication. It is also a very easily misused or
misinterpreted thing. You may think you're being funny, but unless you are
very careful to make it clear that it's a joke (through use of smilies or
some other way of flagging things as a joke), don't be surprised when people
don't notice you're joking and get upset. Humor is easily lost in written
discussion, so you have to use it with great care.