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| Netiquette |
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Contrary to popular belief, email can be used for much more than writing to
your mother about the daily adventures of farm life. All the technosavvy
hipsters know how to get the most out of their email, and don't fret - the next few pages will teach you how to be as technosavvy as the best of
them. (As for hipness, you're on your own.)
Today we will talk about email etiquette, special abbreviations and symbols,
and email mailing lists. We'll also try to help you stay out of trouble :-).
No matter who you're writing to, it's important to know your email etiquette.
Here are some basic dos and don'ts about writing messages:
DON'T SHOUT. Using all capitals is considered shouting and is very rude. You should only use all caps if you actually want to shout or
emphasize something.
Whatever you do, DON'T SPAM (shouting intended). Spamming is sending unsolicited email to many people on mailing lists (which we'll
discuss later) or to email addresses you have collected. This congests
mailing lists and/or people's mailboxes. It is inconsiderate and makes
people very angry. If you do it, you will get caught and flamed.
Don't flame. Flames are scathing messages and harsh
words expressing a lot of hostility toward someone. Flaming
creates a lot of hassle, most mailing lists won't tolerate it, and chances are you'll just get
flamed back (the back-and-forth is called a flame war).
Don't post private mail to public places. If you receive an email message that was sent privately to you, it is very uncool to send it on
to other people. How come? Just imagine that you send your best
friend a message about how cute Scott Baio is, and he mass-mails it to
everyone he knows. Get the point?
Go easy on attachments. Attachments allow you to piggyback files onto your email messages. It's best not to use big attachments unless
you know the person you're mailing actually wants them. It is extremely
annoying to have your email take forever to download because somebody is sending you an enormous photo of her cat and you hate
cats.
Be careful about using sarcasm. Especially if you're new to the medium,
try to be straightforward in your emails. Often sarcasm can be misinterpreted as meanness.
The art of writing email is the art of being brief. Here's some email shorthand
that can save you some space:
BTW - by the way
FYI - for your information
IMHO - in my humble opinion
IOW - in other words
LOL - laugh out loud
OTOH - on the other hand
Another standard practice of email aficionados is to use emoticons, little icons that express an angle on what you just wrote. Some people read great
meaning into emoticons (if you don't believe us, check out this smiley chart),
but there are three that are very commonly used (turn your head 90 degrees
to the left to see these little faces):
:-) Basic smiley face. This simply expresses smiley-ness and good will.
;-) Smile-with-wink. This denotes wryness, irony, or that you are joking.
:-( Frowning face. It means your message is unhappy. Sad message.
Now we come to the hard part - actually writing messages. There are no hard-and-fast rules about writing email - it all depends on who you're writing
to.
The words you put in the subject line should generally give the recipient an
idea of what the mail is about. This is especially helpful when people go back
to look for messages later (subject: I want my book back is much easier to find
than subject: hi).
Write with your audience in mind. An email message sent to a prospective employer should not have spelling errors; should begin, "Dear Ms. So-and-So";
and should read like a regular letter. Messages sent to friends or colleagues
might begin with a simple "Hi" or "Hey," and if you're in a hurry, they don't
need a greeting, good spelling, or full sentences:
From: timz@wired.com To: aaron@wired.com
Date: Thu, 23 Oct 1997 09:00:10 -0700
Subject: manana
see ya at th party tomorow. gotta go.
Make up the rules as you go.
Finally, let's take a look at mailing lists.
Mailing lists are collections of email messages about a particular topic that
are regularly mailed out to subscribers. There are thousands and thousands of
mailing lists that toss around tons of ideas and topics (some 70,000 are archived at Topica, the mailing list directory).
These lists usually don't stray from their topics. For example, if I join a mailing
list that talks about weird things, then all of the messages on the list will
discuss losing your pants, creating your own "unorthodox gambling ring," how
to get someone to steal your car, or other weirdness. Often the messages
people send in are collected at the end of the week and sent out to
subscribers in one big email chunk. When checking your weekly mailing list
messages, be prepared for your mail to take a little longer than usual to retrieve.
Subscribing to a mailing list is a cinch. You usually just send
a message to the mailing list's administrative address. This email address often begins with
majordomo@ or listserv@ and includes the word "subscribe" and often the list's
name in the subject line. (Be careful not to send your message to the mailing
list itself, or it might be sent out to everyone on the list, which annoys
people.) So if you want to subscribe to the "Generally Weird" mailing list, the
top of your email message might look like this:
From: joanne@whatever.com
To: majordomo@integral.org
Date: Thu, 23 Jun 1998 09:00:10 -0700
Subject: Subscribe GenerallyWeird
Or you can send an empty message to the address. If that doesn't work, you can try typing "help" in the body of your message. That will usually tell the
person who maintains the list that you need help subscribing and getting started. The last thing you can try is typing "info" in the body, but more than
likely that will get you information about the list and not how to subscribe.
(Usually Web indexes of mailing lists such as Topica will give you all the
details about how to subscribe.)
If you decide that you really don't want to get mail about weird things after
all, you can take yourself off the list. Just
follow the same directions you
used to sign on, but replace "subscribe"
with "unsubscribe" (or sometimes "signoff").
Since mailing lists tend to send you lots of mail, it may not be very wise to
subscribe to 10 at once.
Some mailing lists allow you to add your two cents to the mail that gets sent
to everyone, while others simply send you a dispatch that someone else
writes. On lists that include the messages sent in, it's a good idea to lurk
(read messages without posting) for a while before you leap. Check out the
topics so you know what's going on before you start ranting and raving yourself.
So that's the lowdown on email manners and mass communication.
Congratulations! You may not have noticed the transformation, but you are now a technosavvy hipster yourself. So go out there and start discussing.
Ranting. Sharing your opinion. Just don't forget to breathe. |
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