Email Netiquettes


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Improve your Email Netiquettes this Year

By Sanya Oloruntoba

First Published in PC World West Africa Edition

January 2003

When I was learning to drive a car, I had to study the Highway Code that gave information on what to do and not to do on the highways. In using the Internet for email, I found that although there are no formal rules and codes to learn, there are many informal rules and norms to observe. It is like growing up in a community. You watch and observe your peers, and imbibe the norms of the community called etiquettes. On the net, these norms are called Netiquettes. Here are some email netiquettes you may not be aware of but which you should know.

Mind Your Spelling and Grammar

In composing a normal letter written by hand or a word processor, we usually take time to spell our words correctly. We also check our grammar, because poor grammar and incorrect spelling will make our recipients think poorly of us. Unfortunately, the informality of the email tends to make us careless about our grammar and spelling when sending messages. Most email clients now include spelling checkers. Don’t send a message without first passing it through a spelling checker unless it is a one or two liner! Guard against the use of poor grammar by adopting the simple rule of reading through your emails at least once, before sending them.

 

Be Modest in Your Email

There is a great deal of difference between an email and a letter. The formality of a letter is omitted in the email. Also in a letter, it is accepted as the norm, particularly in Nigeria and some other countries, to use your civic and academic titles profusely as you like. For example, Dr. Engr. Chief Ebenezer will not raise any eyebrows here. In email, don't use such titles. No one on the Internet wants to know if you are a University Don or a student; a Chief or an ordinary citizen; a business tycoon or a small businessman. It is often said that, apart from the tomb, the Internet is the greatest equaliser on earth! That thought alone should make you humble and modest in your email.

To address a Minister or a Commissioner of a powerful Ministry or the Vice Chancellor of a University, just call him by his first name or Mr.<Surname>. You could also just start the email by saying Hello, as you do when you telephone. The Americans say "Hi" to everybody and that is rapidly becoming a way to start an email - Hi John, Hi Musa, or just Hi with no name. There is a little clash of culture here. It is not part of our culture of respect to call one older than our self by his or her first name or even his last name, without a prefix. You may recollect the criticisms that greeted a local newspaper some years back when it adopted the style of replacing Alhaji, Ogbeni, and Ogbuefi with Mr. Well, in the virtual world a simple prefix like Mr. will do.

To end your email, just type in your first name or nickname. In all email programs there is a facility for including a "signature". A signature in email is the record of your full name; what you do or sell; postal address; telephone number; fax number, URL and any other information you may want to disclose, all in two to three lines. You can choose an option to have the signature inserted automatically in every email or manually in selected emails as you wish. Some of my friends include a Scripture or philosophical quotation in their email signature. No harm. The Internet accepts freedom of thought, freedom of worship and freedom of speech!

The signature is very useful in email. If for one reason or another your recipient wants to get in touch with you by phone, post or fax, he should find the necessary information in the signature. I learnt this lesson many years ago when I sent "A Thank You" email overseas to the Editor of a professional magazine who had been sending me a free copy for many years. He replied promptly and asked, "What do you do and where do you live?" I then realised that I have never written to him before by snail mail and I had left out my signature from the emails I sent this kind gentleman!

Be Polite in Your Email

Because of the informality of the email, some people express their feelings and emotions unreservedly in their emails. While there is no need to be unduly secretive or diplomatic, one should learn to exercise much restraint in emails, no matter the annoyance or excitement caused by the subject you are writing about. Avoid rude comments that may hurt others. Impolite or adverse comments about a person, a company or its products should be avoided. Criticism of someone's religion or politics should never be done by email. In fact, it is illegal in Nigeria to disseminate through any network, the following types of information:

  • Pornographic articles
  • Obscene articles
  • Seditious article
  • Information that casts aspersion on a religion, political group, ethnic groups or race.

Be Security Conscious

Remember always that your email is not entirely private. Any of your emails could be read by hundreds of the system administrators through whom emails pass daily. Even the Security Agents of a country may have a setup to read your emails looking for words like, "drug", "highjack", "kidnap", "blackmail" etc. These words may give them a lead or clue to what some criminals are planning or doing - a knowledge that will assist them to protect law-abiding citizens.

Don't send by email security information such as cheque numbers; credit or debit card numbers; bank account numbers, personal identification numbers (PIN) and any other information that may be abused if it gets into the hands of criminals or fraudsters.

What if such information is encrypted? Dedicated hackers can break codes used in encryption. However, you should be aware of two encryption methods that are increasingly employed in emails. One is the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and the other is Digital Certificate (DC). PGP is said to be the best encryption program around. It generates encryption keys that are hard to crack. For Outlook and Outlook Express you can get the program free from <www.pgpi.com> A Digital Certificate is easy to get but it will cost you about $15 a year. In Outlook Express, click Tools > Options > Security and then click "Get Digital ID". That will take you to the Verisign home page for your registration. The advantage of both programs is that they can be used to encrypt your sensitive emails so that no one can open them unless you give him the key.

Compose Your Email Properly

Use simple words and prose in your email. Don't write your email in capitals or uppercase characters because it will be difficult to read. But you may use uppercase characters to emphasis some words. Composing in capital letters is also regarded as "flames" or "shouting" in newsgroups and also in emails. It is impolite to shout when you speak to people. Don’t shout in your email.

Try to break your messages into short paragraphs separated by single blank lines. They will be easier to read that way. In addition, don’t forget to begin every new sentence with a capital letter, and dot your "i" and cross your "t" as my school English teacher used to admonish. Fortunately, your word processor dots your "i" and cross your "t" for you automatically!!

Use Emoticons Sparingly

When you speak to people, they study your facial and body expression and add them to your voice to judge your reactions and statements. They can’t do that when you write or send them emails. It is for that reason that emoticons were developed to express joy, sadness and so forth, in emails. I once received an email full of emoticons. I can’t understand some of them and so the facial and body signs the writer was trying to convey were lost. Don’t overuse emoticons.

 

Reply to All Emails Received

I have learnt from experience that some emails go astray and do not reach their destinations on the Internet. These are of course exceptions rather than the rule. Normally, the system administrators concerned return all wrongly addressed or undeliverable emails to the sender. But how do you know that a properly addressed email has reached a recipient that has no Responder? You assume that any email not returned has reached its destination, but this assumption may be wrong. The recipient's communication system might have broken down or he might have changed his address. In such cases his email will be in his ISP's server, not fetched. It is on account of such incidents that it has become the norm to reply to every email received. The only exception to this rule is to ignore spam and scam mails that are becoming rampant in emails.

If your computer system breaks down and you are unable to fetch your email for a long time or if you are going away for a long time, you should let your ISP know. He could arrange to return your emails to the senders, retain them or forward them to your fax in your new location. Most ISPs will render such services free or for a small fee. If you are away for a short period and you find an accumulation of emails on your return, reply to them immediately and apologise for the delay. All these are normal good manners in everyday life, but have become very important in the virtual world of the Internet.

These days, most ISPs make it easy for you to fetch your email from anywhere in the world. I have a Laptop but I don’t like towing it along when traveling. Now, I don’t have to. Thanks to the Cyber Cafes springing up in our large towns and cities and all over the world. Wherever I may be in the world, I can now access my emails from the nearest Cyber Cafe by logging on to my ISP’s Website. It is cheap and convenient.

Be Friendly with your ISP

A lot of unprintable things have been said about the local Internet Service Providers. What is generally not appreciated is that they are heroic pioneers trying hard to get our country connected to the Internet despite the many odds at home. The major problems the ISPs have, like the rest of us, are the unreliable national power supply and the inadequate telephone services. (Oh, thanks to the present administration, power is becoming more reliable and the telecom is improving). Because of these problems, Internet users here cannot at present get the same type of efficient services provided by foreign-based ISPs in their home environment. Abroad, you get instant access to the Internet 24 hours a day and 365 days a year! Here, long delays in logging in are still common and are frustrating, to say the least. No wonder, many Internet users feel like punching their ISPs whenever they could. Others migrate from one to another in search of better service. Be friendly with ISP because he is your lifeline to the Internet. Don’t be a rolling stone either. They all have the same basic problems. That does not mean that they are all equal. As in other parts of the world some are better than others.

 

I first wrote this article in March 1998 for an IT magazine that is no longer in production. Infuriated by the lack of netiquette in hundreds of emails I have received since then, I dug up the old article with the hope of re-polishing it for publication in PC World West Africa. Surprisingly, I found very little to add to the original article. That shows that etiquettes are abiding social rules that change very little over time because of the benefits they bring to the community. Similarly, netiquettes are beneficial social rules for the growing Internet community. Therefore, we must all strife to improve our Netiquettes!

 

 

 

 

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