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E-Mail Guidelines and Security Tips
Note: We recommend NOT replying to "Remove me from this list" addresses, as this only confirms that your e-mail address is active and may direct more unwanted e-mail to your account. Also, be wary of clicking any URL embedded in an unsolicited message/e-mails, as this may reveal your e-mail address to that Web site or cause other negative consequences.
This document contains suggestions and guidelines
for creating, security, forwarding and handling of E-Mails. I am not
the author, only the messenger. I want to thank Phil Gold for his time
and interest in putting together such a comprehensive look into e-mail and
e-mail programs. I hope this is a useful tool.
emailStripper is a free program for cleaning the ">" and other formatting characters out of your emails. It will restore "forwarded" or "replied" emails back to their original state so they're easier to read. It's simple to use, and best of all it's FREE!
Many problems exist in creating, forwarding, sending and receiving E-Mails. Most correspondents are familiar with E-Mails received which are devoid of punctuation, colors, and even paragraph breaks, not to mention jumbled up text and premature line breaks.
Many E-Mails do not protect the privacy of correspondents, especially when forwarded. For example, one often receives E-Mails that have been forwarded to many individuals with one "send" and which include the E-Mail addresses of all the recipients. This creates situations where recipients' addresses are broadcast and forwarded to unknown parties, again and again.
Other times attachments are not checked with up to date virus checkers or not virus checked making the recipient deciding whether to risk maiming of herm computer or just simply not opening the attachment.
Although "business" English has long contained loosened grammatical rules, recently dangling participles have been acceptable.
However, most text has grammatical errors and run-on sentences. Lots of E-Mails contain incomplete sentences, misspelled words, undecipherable acronyms and abbreviations.
E-Mail software developers and internet service providers obviously do not follow any standards in handling E-Mails. Thus each person's E-Mail sent and received are hosed up in different ways.
Whereas traditionally people followed some guidelines for creating written letters and memos, E-Mails have reduced correspondence to a level far below even rudimentary acceptance. The result is deteriorated text and lack of care for quality communications in our society.
Now I don't claim to be an expert on English grammar nor to be professional proficient at proper English but I certainly try to prepare and present the written word such that its easy to read and understand. I do not object to anyone, including myself, taking some liberties with informal communications such as E-Mails and memos but I and I believe most people should expect no less than understandable text created via computer.
We often get e-mails back with hosed up text. I think that most people who create E-Mails do so allowing their text to loop back (don't hit ENTER at the end of a line) and put in paragraph breaks (ENTER) along with other punctuation. But when received they are usually are devoid of all of the punctuation and the lines broken such that a couple of words on that line are on the next. For example: "Several years ago when they were researching pickups they thought Toyota was the best and probably still think so. I don't remember reading anything about the Mitsubishi Montero, but a of mine said that Mitsubishi was the worst car he ever owned. I . . ." We get e-mails that have all punctuation (except periods ".") and paragraph breaks stripped such that it comes to us as a giant paragraph. I have my email software (Outlook) set to line widths of 72 characters which I am told is the recommended width. Setting widths more or less can hose up some e-mails depending on how people set up their e-mail software.
Its too bad that ISP's and E-mail software vendors can't seem to come up with a common format/procedure that would let us send out colors, different text widths and types, bold, underline, italics, punctuation, etc. without them being stripped away by handling and receiving software either at the ISP or individual PC.
I labored for many months thinking that my punctuation, text size, colors, etc. was being received the way I wrote it. But then I noticed that it was returned devoid of any such enhancements. I started checking and 90% of my recipients received my e-mails as plain text.
My ISP Mindspring does, in most cases, return E-Mails from Mindspring customers correctly but most others do not. I would think that English teachers and other professionals and educators would be concerned about this because it destroys well written text, not to speak of hosing up even bad grammar text. Whereas people could improve their writing skills they just give up because their product ends up alphabet soup.
Also, if you are as annoyed as I am about the
pesky “>”’s that end up in forwarded E-Mails, most E-Mail software has
an option that you can check or uncheck to stop putting “>” in front of
forwarded text. If you want to eliminate the “>” ‘s from messages,
use your WORD or other word processor by cutting the text from the E-Mail,
PASTE-ing it in the word processing document, use “REPLACE” to change from
> to space specifying ALL, cut it from there and paste it back into the
email.
Some people also put their replies at the end of
replied or forwarded E-mails causing one to search for the current message
which can also be annoying. There is generally an option to put this
text at the beginning.
Some people tend to hit ENTER at the end of the
line instead of allowing the email software editor to wrap. This causes some
hacked up text when received. Intentional paragraph breaks often are
done with a single ENTER which does not allow a space between paragraphs.
Setting E-Mail text widths at 72 characters I am told is the recommended width. Setting widths more or less can hose up some e-mails depending on how people set up their e-mail software.
Not all email software will handle colors, bold, italic, underline, etc. so it may also be either a waste of time or it could possibly hack up the received text.
Many people send medium to long E-Mails that are all one paragraph. This makes it very difficult to read and almost impossible to read quickly. Its better to break it up into new paragraphs every few sentences.
Sometimes the one-paragraph effect is created by incompatible ISP or other E-Mail software over which the sender has little control. These software and ISP changes also strip off colors, line breaks and text wraps, punctuation and other devices designed to make text more readable.
Change of Address and Vacation: Some of us have found that notifying people of a change in our email address due to changing internet service providers (ISP) does not usually get updated in 100% of our addressees’ email address books. You can avoid this by using a free email forwarding service such as www.mail.com (there are a lot of them) which will automatically forward your email. Then if you change you simply change the forwarding address in www.mail.com.
This will also allow you do forward email temporarily
to another person’s email address so that if your computer is out of commission
for awhile or you are on a trip etc. you can get your email there.
Some ISP’s allow free second or even third email addresses which you can point wherever you like. If your email software can handle it, it will split the email to two different input mailboxes when received. Otherwise you will have to forward the additional email names to the main or original email address and split it manually. (My OUTLOOK does not allow automatic splitting so email to the alternate address is forwarded to our primary email address.)
Some people’s email software does not easily
present the subject (or title) of emails. To make sure the addressee
knows what it contains and does not just discard, repeat the subject on the
first line of the text. Also, if your email address (like mine) does
not easily identify who you are, you might want to add your name in the subject
or title.
If you reply to or forward an email address, consider
removing all or unimportant text in the original text received. This
limits disk space on yours and addressee’s disk drives. You can easily remove
all by putting your cursor in the text, pressing ctl-a and then del.
If you are sending email to a lot of people, say 20 or 30 at once, company email software or some ISPs may consider this SPAM and reject it. Try to keep the number below 15 or so to avoid this happening which means you may have to send it more than once to get to everyone.
Most of us today are busy and often receive a number of E-Mails and sometimes dozens daily. Thus it behooves the composer or forwarder to keep the material short. Often one likes to share E-Mails containing funny or thoughtful material but the text is so long that hardly any recipient has the time or patience to read it. Cutting down text to relay information, jokes or thoughts efficiently will certainly go a long way in having your text read and at least cause the recipients to end up deleting most or all of your E-Mails on the grounds that it just takes too much time and effort to read them.
Text should be easy to read. It should contain short, to the point, sentences and frequent paragraph breaks. It certainly should be spell checked, at least for common mistakes. Sentences should not have "reversed" sentences where possible. Sentences such as "Although the moon will be full on Sunday, the visibility will be obscured to fog and rain." are sometimes hard to follow. Sentences are easier to read and understand if expressed head-on such as "Sunday's visibility will be obscured by fog and rain even though the moon will be full.", or just "Sunday's visibility will be reduced by fog and rain."
If run-on sentences will speed up reading then they should be acceptable. Dangling participles are accepted today and should be used if they help efficiency. However, long run-on sentences or jumbled up or incomplete sentences are often obscure.
We have mentioned forwarding or sending E-Mails
to a number of people at once. This saves time but in most cases unless
you expect Reply All for the recipients the addressing should be via Bcc,
not To or Copy to avoid broadcasting E-Mail addresses to everyone on the list.
Also, when sending such E-Mails one should state at the onset that several people are being addressed so that even if the text is generic it the recipient does not get the impression that you are being cold or formal. If you expect a reply state that you will or will not share the reply with the other recipients. An easy way to do this is to include "Bcc" in the title and/or at the first of the text body.
Forwarding text or even creating text that comes
to the reader as an attachment just causes the reader to do extra work in
reading E-Mails. Often forwarded text is found at the end of a number
of attachments that must be waded through before the text can finally be read.
Rude, dictatorial, overbearing or pompous text should not be sent under most circumstances. Not only will it offend the reader it may be forwarded to people who certainly were not intended to read to read the material. Always remember that almost anyone MIGHT read the E-Mail despite precautions. For example, there is a saying about treatment of fellow employees: "..you never know who is going to end up being your boss!".
Ordinarily there is no such thing as E-Mail security. Anyone including hackers and snoopers can read them almost at will. However, there are a number of software programs on the market, some free, that will scramble text (but not addresses). Most generate the text as attachments making them sometimes awkward to use.
If you need security use a landline telephone (not cellphone). Such items as Social Security numbers, bank account numbers, credit card numbers, brokerage account numbers and various passwords and other sensitive material should not be sent via E-Mail.
In the meantime, there should be some acceptable way to assure that recipient's that E-Mails were not sent without the sender's knowledge. Trojan and worm software has long been responsible for such being sent and usually contains virus software. I proposed that senders include yesterday's date in the heading but recent virus software has thwarted even this precaution. The only sure means is to send a separate E-Mail or by making an confirming phone call.
E-Mail composers should consider the recipients'
personality, moral principles, and feelings when composing or forwarding
E-Mails. Most people today do not relish off color stories especially
if they have children at home who might read them. Also, many companies
have clamped down on any text messages containing racial slurs, sexually
explicit word and lines or often any reference to sex in any form.
Sending offensive material to anyone at work may
cause them to get in trouble with their employers even though they did not
initiate the material. Forwarding such material to another worker in
the same or even other companies can be grounds for dismissal.
If the material is forwarded it should be edited to remove any offensive material, especially if sent to people at their "work" address.
If your email software is set to include forwarded or reply text as an attachment, then consider changing this option in your email software. Why? Well have you ever gotten one of those “funnies” that end up as an attachment, inside an attachment, inside and attachment etc.? I’ve seen as many as 10 of these!
They are a real pain trying to read them because you have to open each one to get to the next until you finally get to the text.
If you send a WORD document be sure and save it in Word ‘95/6.0 so that it can be translated into other word processors. Also, some people do not have the later WORD releases and cannot read anything beyond W”ORD ‘95/6.0 (WORD ‘97 has a different data compression not available in earlier versions).
Many E-Mail correspondents innocently attach pictures or other short ".HTML"'s such as fancy signatures and such. Unfortunately hackers have invaded such practices and even these attachments may contain virus's. In addition these take up unnecessary disk space.
Most people do not realize that their ISP (internet service provider) allows you the option to screen your incoming E-Mails for SPAM and other commercial or porn site broadcast emails (some even contain virus’). Mindspring’s is called SPAMINATOR This is also available through www.iname.com and other forwarding services which allows for double email screening.
Some ISP's consider any E-Mail that contains more than just a few "To" or "Copy" recipients as SPAM and may not reach the recipient. Other SPAM screening software eliminate references to virus or other dangerous or offensive software or websites. Some screen for virus's and eliminate some suspicious attachments.
Sometimes you are sent an email that is so long
that your ISP or your computer times you out because of the time required
to download, not to mention the large amount of disk space taken up.
If this happens you can sign onto your ISP account via the internet and see
not only the title, from but the size and delete them right there without
having to receive them. If the length is due to a very large attachment
such as a picture there is little anyone can do about it and it cannot be
read via signing on to an E-Mail website. The incompatibility of ISP's e-mail handling, email software etc. make for really jumbled up text, not to mention stripping off colors, punctuation etc. You would think that they would get together and come up with some common standards that prevent hosing up text."
I recently saw an item on TV that spoke of e-mail composers and especially teens coming up with their own language composed of various words created from abbreviations or acronyms. Although this is inevitable, there should be some guidelines as to how this should be done so that there aren't a lot of different "words" for the same abbreviation or acronym. For example, we have a real need for words to represent items like "and/or", "him or her", "he or she", "E-Mail", "E-" anything, etc.
A lot of people simply do not know how to check their spelling or just don't take an extra few seconds to do so. This is just a common courtesy. People tend to take liberties with grammar trying to be "natural" and brief in E-mails so I think guidelines for e-mail grammar variances would be helpful.
Also, the English language sorely needs new words and rules to eliminate awkward wording created by such things as avoiding dangling participles (which is deemed ok in modern business writing courses taught to business professionals).
I think that since people are going to use "telegraph" English and run-on sentences when their e-mail's are informal and they are in a hurry, that there be some guidelines established there too. A recent business English course I took stressed that informal memos and E-mails reflect how the person would express their thoughts if they were speaking.
Always be suspicious of an attachment that ends in .EXE, .DOC, .XCL, VBS, VBE, JS, JSE, WSH, WSF, WSC, GIF, MP3, or just about any other "suffix" one can imagine. Recently even the .JPG and other "picture" attachments have the potential of a virus in their overflow buffers.
Thus a rule has evolved to "never open an email from anyone you don't know and never open an attachment from anyone unless they have certified that it is virus free and they tell you what is in it.
Virus protectors should be updated at least once a month! If the virus protector does not check emails and attachments then change to one that does like NORTON (SYMANTEC) or McAffee.
Doc Young [ http://www.computer-firstaid.com ] has proposed that "…all e-mail servers should automatically virus scan all e-mail and attachments as it is received. " Some ISP's are doing this already but many do not. It is important for the ISP customer to find out whether or not the ISP is checking for virus'.
Uniformity of Import and Export Address Books:
D.R. D"oc Young" [ http://www.computer-firstaid.com ] has proposed that "…all import/export adddress books should be the same format and from File Import / Export address books..". This will eliminate the headaches involved in trying to move E-Mail address book contents from one E-Mail software system to another and from one computer to another.
Protecting the privacy of your E-Mail addresses:
Most of us get "FW's", jokes or other material that has been forwarded by someone who sent it to us and a lot of others at the same time. It generally contains the E-Mail addresses of everyone that was addressed. And it may contain several layers of forwarding including all the email addresses in those forwards.
Some people object that they would prefer not to have their email address broadcast out to a lot of people they don't know. Although this may never cause a problem, you never know who those people are forwarding the same email, including addresses, to and then those people forward it and so on. Your email address could end up in potentially thousands of different people's emails.
Did you know that when you send E-Mail to a lot of people at once you can use "BCC" instead of TO or CC which will only reflect the receiver's name in their E-Mail? BCC was originally designed to send a copy to other people without the main addressees knowing about it. (BCC may not be available on your E-Mail software or it may be called something else.)
For example, if I send a message or forward a message to jack@aol.com; Susan@aol.com; hart@juno.com using TO or CC, when Jack receives his email, he will see Susan's and Hart's email addresses.
But if I use "BCC" (or equivalent) to address everyone, Susan will only see her address in her email, Jack will only see his and so on. That protects the privacy of the others you are sending to. If it gets forwarded by Jack, then his addressees will only see Jack's E-Mail address, not Susan's or Hart's. (It will have the sender's email address though!)
If your email software requires at least one "TO" address, then put your own in the "TO" slot and discard it when it comes back (which will assure you that it actually went out).
If your email software does not save all the BCC addresses in your SENT messages, you may want to go into the BCC box before you SEND, press CTL-A, COPY and save it somewhere to put back into the message after its SENT.
Doc Young [ http://www.computer-firstaid.com ] has proposed that "Maybe e-mail programs should have an automatic feature when you go to address more than one person, that you receive a pop-up explaining options and why, asking are you sure you do not wish to use Bcc:." I might add that there should be a fourth "Bcc" that would allow recipients to "Reply All" even though they would not know the E-Mail addresses of the other recipients.
Tight security has long been available in internet explorer software such as Internet Explorer and Netscape with the use of security software protected websites. There is really no reason that software developers should not provide better E-Mail security via scramblers that are built into E-Mail software rather than E-Mail composers having to use third party software prevalent today.
Its imperative that our teachers, professors, and other professionals who uphold standards for communications guide us in setting up standards and guidelines so that the level E-Mail correspondence quality be raised to the standards of other communications such as letters, memos, news, etc. Otherwise United States English E-Mail and possibly other computer generated communications will continue to deteriorate.
I think that most companies, software firms, ISP's and individuals would welcome some universal guidelines (at least for the U.S). Creation and maintenance of such guidelines would have to be a joint effort between software designers, English teachers, and professionals whose jobs are creating documents, manuals, and business writing courses for business and government.
I think that most would follow the guidelines if given the opportunity along with universal e-mail software. That would certainly improve the writing ability of most students and indeed most adults and greatly improve the quality and reliability of computerized communications.
Before you Forward E-Mail or send using Multiple People / Recipients
Rule #1: NEVER "Just Click Forward"
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