Email Etiquette

April 23, 2006

Consider it a favor to your email recipients when forwarding emails, if you delete all of the email addresses that were forwarded to you.

Do you ever find that sometimes you receive chain emails from people you didn't know only to eventually recognize the email address as one who was included in several chain emails you had received from a friend or relative? Not only are you receiving chain letters from your friends and relatives, but their friends have now included you in their email chain list (just what you need). Can you spell D-E-L-E-T-E?

The other day, just for grins, I decided to put together a newsletter to promote my site. I went through approximately 1 month worth of emails and pulled off the email addresses that had been forwarded several times and eventually ended up in my mailbox . I managed to find over 200 names to include in my newsletter list (I wished I hadn't been so quick to delete the emails that I did).

Granted, I'm sure my newsletter ended up in their junk mail folder and was probably deleted. However, it goes to show, that our friends are inadvertently contributing to our unwanted mail clutter. Before forwarding those cute email chain letters or the funny animal trick URL, you should do two things:

1. Delete all email addresses that are not part of the actual message and do not add value to the topic of the email.

2. Insert all mail recipient names in the Blind Carbon Copy field (BCC) rather than the To or CC field. By using BCC, all recipients names will not display in the header of your email.

No, this is not a cure all for junk email and spam, but it does a lot of good knowing that you are one of the email pals that cares and is willing to protect the addresses of your friends and relatives

Let's practice:

1. Open your email program.

2. Copy the following and place it in the body of your email:

   "I found this really cool new website and wanted to share it with you. Here's the address: www.tidbitsnstuff.com."

3. Now, go to the BCC field and put in the email addresses of everyone you know.

4. Click send.

That wasn't so tough now, was it?

I really ought to be ashamed of myself. Oh well, that's my two cents and I'm sticking with it!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Felicia A. Williams is a freelance writer and webmaster of this website, Visit Hudson Valley.com and No Job for Mom.com. She also blogs about Living Green one choice at a time.

This document last modified Wednesday, 16-Jul-2008 06:40:06 EDT

Tidbits & Stuff was born on Thursday, March 9, 2006
© 2006, 2007, 2008 Felicia A. Williams

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