Typo cop: I meant Strunk & White, of course, not “Stunk” & White. Though it’s certainly a poetic slip if you’re not a fan. :)

Merlin,

Loved your talk at Google.

If I had to pick one, I would pick one you mentioned there: process to zero.

If I could pick two, I would say “write better email”. Included in that would be to draft emails that include a great subject line indicating what action needs to be taken. This idea comes from Sally McGhee (former partner of David Allen’s).

-Always only one person in TO field. -Use numbering if you list your points or questions. -No mail exceeding 10 sentences. -If you quote previous email, make sure your text stands out. -Always write when you want to get a reply if it’s urgent. -I don’t need “Thank you” response to every email I send. -Use god damn spellchecker before sending email, it’s already there and it’s free!

The Rand Corporation published “Toward an Ethics and Etiquette for Electronic Mail” in 1985, 10 years before RFC 1855. It’s online at www.rand.org/pubs/reports/R3283/index.html.

1. No goofy backgrounds or wacky fonts. Every time I open one of these emails, I want to kill bunny rabbits because I know that their deaths will surely hurt the sender of a cutesy email in some way.

2. Inform with the subject line. No “Hey…,” “Whats up?,” “Hi there” or any of that.

3. Don’t write a novel in your subject line.

I disagree.

I’m not sure about the no HTML email rule. I just recently began work in an office with a system that doesn’t support HTML email and it is a much less rich system than I’m used too. Picture attachments won’t show up in the body of an email so you can’t arrange your text about the picture around it. You can’t post things from the web in and expect them to look anything like they did online. In general it feels like going back in time.

Another rule at my office is “no managing by email.” In a lot of ways this is good because it reduces misunderstandings and you can be sure someone got your message because you looked them in the eye. What I have learned about myself is that I had become accustomed to organizing my tasks via an email system and now I’m constantly being given things to do in person. So I have to write them down or they slip through the cracks. For a while I used post-it notes but then after they overwhelmed my desk I switched to emailing myself and using MS outlooks task list feature. Every time I go into outlook to task myself, I wish the person who gave me this task would have sent it in email in the first place.

Relevant subject lines and the use of QQ—Quick Question more often.

The complete elimination of ccing everyone to say “Thanks!” “Congratulations! You did a great job!”. Please just send your thanks and kudos directly to the sender.

The one thing that is getting to me at the moment is the unnecessary follow up e-mails.

“Thanks.”

“No worries.”

“You’re welcome.”

It reminds me of teenagers trying to get off the phone.

“No, you hang up.”

Think memorandum - would you send a memo that says something like this?

No HTML Email (unless for marketing purposes)

If you use a Email address more than once in your To: field then for Pete’s sake, add it to your Contact list.

For the people out there who are clearly frustrated and annoyed by those one-word “thanks” or “you’re welcome” messages I would suggest a little deep breathing. Perhaps it’s time to stop letting e-mail interrupt your work. If you’re getting so worked up over what someone else clearly thinks of as a courtesy, something is clearly not working for you and you need to realize that, as Merlin says, everyone has their own set of rules and etiquette for e-mail.

I, for one, like such succinct messages best of all because (a) in many cases it is very nice to have confirmation that my kind and thoughtful message was received rather than trapped in a spam filter and (b) the only processing required of me is delete. Let’s not throw out all of our manners for the sake of saving a keystroke! Because people’s preferences differ, perhaps we need a convention similar to the widely recognized “EOM” subject line that says “No reply necessary” or “please confirm receipt”?

Personally, the messages that give me the biggest headaches are the long-winded and ambiguous ones. I completely agree with rediscovering the lost art of the Subject Line. The trend towards five.sentenc.es means well, and I think it’s a good guideline for people to keep in mind, but the primary goal should be clear communication.

Do whatever it takes for you to clearly articulate what’s on your mind. A writer doing this properly will think about what he or she is saying from my perspective long enough to understand whether or not I might require a long and detailed or short and succinct message. Let’s have fewer rules and more thoughtfulness.

What Matt said…

what Matt said…. clear succinct communication, more thoughtfulness.

One thing I always do: If I’m going to add someone to the CC line, I say so in my email text and give the reason why.

One of my biggest pet peeves is the exponential CC line for no apparent reason. Is it some kind of passive aggressive CYA? Man that bugs me.

I confess getting a certain kind of satisfaction at seeing a student (Scott, above) complaining about e-mail he gets from faculty. Most of the complaining I hear is about e-mail traffic in the opposite direction.

But the comment about faculty-specific messages going campuswide made me wonder: for how many of us is it true that some administrative level in our own organizations is our chief source of spam? I regularly get e-mails several times a day pertaining to offices in my institution where I will never set foot, and it only recently occurred to me that there was no real reason I couldn’t treat them like the spam they are - now I use a mailbox rule to funnel everything into a folder that I review…not very often.

I’d ban the use of CC as a CYA, FYI, or the “copy your boss if you don’t do what I want” threat.

I’d estimate that 30% of corporate mail is unnecessary CCs. If you delegate a task to someone then let them handle it. You don’t need a CC along the way to keep inormed. If status updates are needed they should be sent as a specific e-mail to the gorup that needs it. Blanket CCs lead to overflowing and unread e-mails.

Rather than CC everyone, handle the issue and only pull in outsiders if it can’t be resolved. If that is the case then have a quick conversation to catch up the decision makers. Expecting everyone on a CC e-mail fight to keep up with the 30 tone-laden repliies is just a waste of resources.

Uh… busy solving the wrong problem. It is not about making email better it is about eliminating email and incorporating appropriate messaging into whatever you are trying to get done. Broadcast messaging and messaging queues. If I ran the world and had a magic wand - poof - ixnay maileay.

These are all great points. Almost everything is said about what the best email practice should be. We can only hope that these practices will come true.

From the corporate perspective, a couple of suggestions that would make a huge difference: 1. Do not cc half the world on an e-mail because you think they might need to know something, to CYA. etc.

1. Do NOT try to use e-mail to solve a complicated problem (e.g. why didn’t this health care claim get paid?) — it’s a guarantee of half-truths, misinformation, unhelpful suggestions and rising frustration. Call a short meeting instead or make some calls.

2. If an email chain has more than five back and forth’s — it’s not achieving its intended purpose. Pick up the phone or walk down the hall.

Hope this is helpful. Agree with everyone’s suggestions above as well.

I agree with BigNerd that dictating email style hampers free speech, and is ultimately an exercise in futility. So instead, my “magic wand” is pointed at myself: here’s what I wish everyone did:

Acknowledge all emails. (Only where required - see below). Do it regularly (not instantly), even if just to say “I read your email and can’t reply yet” or “I’d prefer to talk on the phone about this”. That way, email goes back to being an assured delivery method, which is why it was so cool in the first place: you KNOW your recipient got your message.

One of the reasons myspace is winning as the preference of the next generation is assured delivery: you know that if you send someone a message, they’ll see it. They might ignore or delete it, but you can (more or less) prove that they at least saw it, because you can see when they last logged in. And people act accordingly. Contrast that with email, where spam filters trap LOTS of legit mail, and plain old “email overload” causes people to throw up their hands and ignore / delete unread messages. When I send an email, I often have no idea if it was ever read, but when I send a myspace message, I’m pretty damn sure it was. Obeying a universal “law of replies” might bring that feeling back to email.

(And for the record, return receipts are no good for this - they’re invasive of my privacy … why should you know EXACTLY when I read your email? The acknowledgment has to be volitional.)

Three exceptions to the “Acknowledge All Email” rule:

1 - If it’s a thread, I agree with Ed Eubanks that the last “Thanks.” email is just annoying. My rule applies primarily to the first reply, where acknowledgement is novel. That said, it’s polite and nothing to get worked up about.

2 - This rule doesn’t always apply within an organization, where email delivery is already pretty much guaranteed, or with anyone you work with regularly enough to have confidence in delivery. If you’re at that level, good for you. Still, a prompt reply (where warranted) is courteous.

3 - If an email requires no reply, I agree with Matt - the sender should indicate that by starting with “FYI” or some similar convention. We’ve got enough email in the universe, so if you can end a thread before it starts, do so.

And to chime in on two other topics:

Subject lines? Who cares - just parse out your tasks, get ‘em into your system, and archive. All you folks complaining about bad subject lines … it’s because you use your inbox to implicitly store your tasks, isn’t it? Come on, you can admit it, Merlin won’t zap you (AFAIK). You’re just piling that work on yourselves; parse the tasks out of an email once, and you’ll never held hostage by someone else’s bad subject line again.

Formatting? I’m going to go against the grain on the HTML email thing. If you don’t want to read HTML emails, that’s fine, but don’t put the burden on me; run a script that pulls out just the text on your own machine. There’s no inherent reason that text communications shouldn’t include formatting like bold and italics; anything that helps convey tone is OK in my book. HTML is (unfortunately) the most standard option we’ve got, so until there’s a better rich text standard that’s universal, it’ll have to do. (But I’ll grant you that the prescriptive rule should be that you don’t put meaningless formatting in the message - no funky backgrounds, animated gifs or comic sans. Use it to enrich, not distract.)

@MEP - your point about writing readable prose is well taken; however, my point is that plain text is not the only reasonable mode of writing. Personally, I’d rather have more contextual information than less; sometimes it’s hard to tell tone, even in good writing (for example, if I didn’t know better, I might think that your invocation of Stunk & White was a passive-aggressive dig at my writing style ;). Good writing should indeed be a priority, but I still don’t see that as a reason to disallow rich text across the board.

I also disagree that setting up a filter on your end is ridiculous. It’s empowering; don’t depend on other people to conform to your view of the world, but use technology to “customize” your own view. No one is saying you have to do it, but if it really bothers you that people put rich text in emails, the choice is yours.

Now, I’ll admit to playing Devil’s Advocate a bit. At home, I’m a plain text guy all the way (I manage my life in text files, and almost never use said formatting “crutches” in my messages). If email had been like TXT messages and never strayed into formatting territory, perhaps we’d all be better off. But it didn’t; the cat is out of the bag, and email is no longer a text-only medium, and I don’t think it can ever go back. Outlaw the distracting froofy backgrounds & fonts, perhaps, but embrace richer modes of communication in general.

I have three best-practices when it comes to email:

1) treat all incoming email like voice mail: I will take action on it and will immediately delete it if it has no long term value

2) treat all incoming email like voice mail 2: Send an email and make it very easy for them to contact you later. Have a signature that spells out your email address and phone numbers.

3) treat all incoming email like voice mail 3: Keep the message short and to the point. Be clear on what you expect the recipient to do.

Do not ever call me to tell me about the email you just sent me.

I’m with Adam.

If it’s important CALL ME. Email is a good method for the incompetent to abandon responsibility.

I think you are on to something, but I would say to put your example as the first (only) line of the body text. Maybe I am the only one that has this problem… but I often have the window of mail.app kind of small and there for do not see the entirity of longer subject lines. In this situation, I then click on the message to be confused for a bit at the lack of body text, then read the longer subject. Just some thing to think about.

My one “Golden Rule” is that e-mail should never be used for time-sensitive communication, nor should it be assumed that the recipient must answer any faster than they choose to do so themselves.

Maybe I can start with an auto-reply like this?

“If my house is on fire or the stock market just melted down, please give me a call on my cell phone. Otherwise, I’ll get back to you when I can. Thanks. -Terrence”

I have a best practice: be thoughtful when you write an e-mail. If it’s worth writing, write it well. Does the subject line convey the subject? If you’re asking someone to act, regardless of who’s copied, is it clear who you’re asking and what you expect of them? Have you used real sentences that are likely to be understood by the people you’re writing to? The primary objective is to be understood, and not many hard and fast rules can ensure that.

Some e-mails need to be long. Some need to copy a fair number of people. And it may not be practical to break up a lot of topics into a lot of e-mails, one per topic.

Other than that - what’s the fuss about text-only e-mails? I’ve never understood it. Do you write unformatted, text-only letters or web pages? What’s the advantage of text, given the many advantages of a well-formatted html e-mail??

Wow. What a lot of hatred for email. I wonder if this is a generational, personal, or organizational culture thing.

Best things about email: - Asynchronous. You can send me something and I get to it when I get to it. This is especially useful for communicating with people in different time zones. Note: You do not have to have alerts turned on. If they disturb your work, turn them off and check your mail when it’s convenient for you. - Paper trail. I find this just as useful for looking up what I said as it is for tracking what other people said. Not to mention filing receipts from online purchases. (Yes, I have actually referred to these later. I would never do that with a paper receipt for personal purchases.) - Written. Personally, I’m a visual learner, and I dislike talking on the phone. I will retain what you tell me much better if you write it out than if you say it out loud, and I’ll be much more comfortable if you email me than if you call me. - Cheap. Most of my closest friends live far away. Email is cheaper than long distance for discussions and staying in touch. This is true both for long, involved discussions, and the short sort of notes that we would never call each other about because it’s too trivial.

One email hint for people who are looking for better systems: As a general rule, people don’t read, especially when it comes to business email, so put the most important thing first. We did an informal experiment here where my coworker sent out details for a meeting asking for an RSVP. He got much better results when he asked for the RSVP at the top of the email with the details below than when he put the details first and the RSVP request second.

My single best practice would have to be about time-sensitivity. I’d change people’s crazy expectations which stem from the instantaneous nature of email (“yeah, I know it arrives instantly, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to read it instantly”). I’d try to have people understand that e-mail is really nothing more than an accelerated method of message delivery. Even if the postal delivery guy could get my physical letters to me as quickly as e-mail, I’d still only check the mailbox by the curb when I had the time. And I’d still put the stack of mail on my desk and read it when I had the time. And I’d still take the appropriate action and reply — you guessed it — when I had the time.

If you have something important, pick up the phone.

“nobody ever set the ground rules for email”

That’s not correct. RFC 1855. Google it. It’s good stuff. A modern-day update to RFC 1855 should be compulsory reading for every Internet user.

Hmmm. ONE rule? Okay, here we go:

No reply/forward/copy unless ABSOLUTELY necessary.

I can’t say how frustrated I get by a response to “here’s the document you requested” or yes, I’ll meet you at 11am” sorts of messages, with no different subject line or whatever, that I open to find:

“thanks.”

Spare me!!!