Email Etiquette - Emailers Anonymous

Today we'd like to introduce the first in a new weekly series of posts at Download Squad called Emailers Anonymous, a series for anyone that is addicted to email as part of their daily life. We're going to explore email from all angles - everything from email clients to email etiquette, email productivity to email formatting. And anything else you have questions about.

Today's post will focus on email etiquette, and how to be a good email neighbor.


It's easy to feel frustrated with friends and co-workers when they make basic email mistakes like sending messages with no subject text, or referencing an attachment but not actually including one. But are we completely innocent of making email offenses ourselves? Have a look at the ones listed below; maybe you could be a better email neighbor.

Links without context

This is maybe one of the most common, and most egregious faux pas that can be committed online. It happens on instant messaging programs and frighteningly often on Twitter, but it also happens very often in email. Think about the last time you came across a website you really wanted a friend to see. When you emailed it to them, did you give any descriptive text so that they had a clue as to what they were about to see when clicking on your link, or did you simply give the a link and expect them to blindly follow it? This is tantamount to saying "close your eyes and open your mouth" - no thanks! If you really want people to follow your links, take a moment to explain what they are about to see - a sentence or two is enough.


Blind Carbon Copying (BCCing)

Blind Carbon Copying (known as BCCing) is used to include someone on an email without advertising to the rest of the correspondents that this person has been included. It's sort of like letting someone quietly listen in on a phone conversation on an extension without introducing them.

Before using BCC, consider the message you're sending. Are you simply trying to CYA (cover your posterior) by BCCing your boss on a controversial email? Are you including a friend or co-worker that doesn't really have any business knowing the details of the email you're sending?

If you feel that someone truly needs to see an email you are sending consider sending the original email first without using the BCC line, then go back and forward your message to the secondary recipient. This makes it clear to your secondary recipient that they are in fact secondary, and precludes the possibility of them replying to the whole group (that didn't previously know they were included). While some email clients protect against this, you can't be sure what other people are using, so it's better to be safe than sorry. And really, is all this sneaking around actually necessary?

Forwarding private email

This is somewhat related to the previous point, in that you should consider whether you have the right to be sharing information. Have you ever received an email that was originally a private conversation between two recipients, but due to some interesting factoid one of the correspondents decided to forward the email to their entire address book? There's something that feels really wrong about that. If you really need to share some information, be sure to extract only the relevant point and include it in a completely new message. This will protect the identity of the original author and hopefully remove the private context of the message.

Changing (or not changing) subject lines where appropriate

Okay, so this is a huge can of worms, but it needs to be addressed. Many people feel that email subject lines should never ever be modified, which ensures that the entire thread stays together. This can be helpful because in the short term we tend to remember what the subject was for an email thread, even if the content of the thread is no longer related to the original point. However this makes finding the thread in the medium to long term much more difficult.

The other related transgression is to change the subject line (often only slightly) for no apparent reason, breaking the thread. This does nobody any favors. Sometimes it is a misconfigured email client that can cause this issue (we're looking at you, Thunderbird) but whatever the reason, it's important to be aware of this issue.

So how do you know when it is appropriate to change the subject line? Our rule of thumb is that if you are about to reply to someone but completely change the topic, either simply start a new email, or at the very least change the subject line. If your reply is still somehow related to the original topic, leave it alone.

Putting too many topics, questions, or action items in a single email

Email is a fantastic tool for disseminating information, but it can and often is seriously abused when it comes to asking questions of others, or worse asking others to take action.

One of the worst things to receive in your inbox is a diatribe containing a long list of questions or requests for action. Usually there is no way that all of the requests can quickly be addressed. So what do you do? Most people are inclined to not respond until they can answer every point. But since it can take days or weeks to actually complete every point, and by then they may not all be relevant any longer, you've been put in an untenable position. The sender is going to end up frustrated that they are not getting action on the items they requested, but in truth it is their own fault.

The sender would be better served to first consider whether each of their requests is actually important enough to deserve their own separate email. If not, simply drop them. If they are, take the time to write a single specific email with your request clearly stated. This gives the recipient a high chance of being able to successfully complete the request and respond.


Have you got a pet peeve related to email that is not commonly discussed? Let us know.

Tags: Email, email-column, email-etiquette, email-feature, Emailers-Anonymous, tweet-this