vsbabu.org

E-mail mistakes

MSN bCentral: “Here are eight easily avoidable mistakes you should know about to keep your image and inbox in tip-top shape.”

1. Failing to follow e-mail etiquette.
2. Thinking you are anonymous.
3. Sending e-mail to the wrong person.
4. Using one e-mail address for everything.
5. Forgetting to check all of your e-mail accounts.
6. Clicking "Send" too fast.
7. Forgetting the attachment.
8. Using your ISP’s domain and not your own.

Pretty good advice. I would like to add avoiding CC soup to the list as well. Over the years, I’ve somewhat figured out not to send mail while angry. Write something, keep it as draft, read it after an hour or so, edit it and then send.

Being a Keralite, my thoughts are usually loaded with sarcasm. This is usually OK in Kerala where others are sarcastic too. They don’t get offended. After I went to Bangalore in 1993, I quickly found out that Keralites' penchant for sarcasm is not shared by others. This makes it even more important to wait before I type my thoughts as e-mail.

Another thing - know the limitations or bugs of your e-mail system. The server in a company where I did consulting had a bug they used to call undocumented feature. If you forward a mail, it will automatically reply to all the original recipients as Bcc, your forwarded mail. Someone sent a mail to all the staff. I got the mail, thought one particular thing was funny and forwarded it to my team. Well, the whole staff got my smart-aleck comments too. Nothing bad happened, but it could’ve been bad. I leave it to your imagination to figure out which e-mail server has bugs like this classified as features.