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Five email tics I'd love for you to lose

Submitted by Merlin on November 7, 2005 - 7:05am.

For the love of God, people; can we get the word out on these? Format courtesy of my other site.

  1. The liberal use of the “VERY HIGH PRIORITY!!!“ flag
  2. The 18-line sig about all the Bad Things that will happen to me if I ever reveal the contents of your privileged, confidential (and unencrypted) message
  3. The unrequested press release (and the serial ignoring of the “Unsubscribe” I sent you for the previous seven press releases)
  4. The graphical background, font and table tags, and remaining 14k of HTML cruft associated with every. single. message. you’ve ever sent
  5. The including of my – plus 98 other strangers’ – personal email addresses in the “To:” line of your friendly reminder about Tyler’s birthday party

Friend: I love you, but you must evolve.

in

I’d add Huge, unexpected, and not...

Submitted by Michael Leddy (not verified) on November 7, 2005 - 7:40am.

I’d add

  1. Huge, unexpected, and not necessarily relevant attachments. I just received a 1/2 MB attachment of this sort (sort of a press release, more or less), sent to everyone in my department.
  2. Minutes of meetings sent as attached .doc files when they could be sent as plain text e-mails (i.e., there’s no complex formatting). Must we be that formal and MSWord-centric?
  3. Students who send e-mail without signing (and with no name in the address.) Who are you? Such stuff prompted me to write some guidelines about how to e-mail a professor— http://mleddy.blogspot.com/2005/01/how-to-e-mail-professor.html
  4. Elaborate sig files on e-mails from people in your own workplace. Whom do they think they’re writing to?