My Email Etiquette

Who likes receiving email that is so hard to read, you pretty much do not and delete it? I can not stand receiving those types of email. I have come to treat my email accounts just like I do my snail mail box. I read the important messages, and delete the junk.

I have certain standards/rules I expect email that arrives in my inbox to have and follow. Here they are.

Is it to the point?

I get tired of email that arrives and has been written to talk about nothing at first, and attempts to transition to a main point and fails. Thinking about this, if I were to receive regular mail in my mailbox like this, it would immediately be thrown into the trash can. So people, when you write an email, just get to the point.

Is it poorly written?

This is one of the most irritating issues when it comes to email. “How r u 2day?” Has the English language been beaten down to the level of stupid? I do not have a busy inbox, with only receiving about fifty to seventy-five emails per day, but atleast half have this gibberish language at its core. Now I am not an expert in writing, but I do expect an email to not be written in text speak. Wut do U thnk?

Is it an advertisement?

SPAM! Nothing else to say here.

How was it written?

My automatic response to email that was written poorly, does not get to the point, written as a reactionary response, written out of anger, or just boring usually get deleted without being read, or without being completely read. Colors in email are a bad thing to me. I do not like reading email that was written in bright colors like YELLOW, or has a bright background color also. What is wrong with you people that do this? Come on, a little mercy here.

Attachments?

I received an email this past week that had 8MB of attachments embedded within it. This caused some issues in Firefox3 and caused all of my swap and RAM to be completely consumed, basically locking up my entire system. Have you received one of those emails from your family or friends that has a video attached? When I see an email that says it has a 25MB file attached, I delete it immediately. Send me a link to YouTube, Vimeo, etc for video, Picasaweb, Live, etc for images, and so on, you get the point I am sure.

Was it digitally signed?

To satisfy the geek in me, a digitally signed email will almost always be read. I sign all of my email using the PGP key on my PGP page. That adds a little credibility to an email in my personal opinion.