Best Practices for Email: Part 2

In Part 1, we looked at some email statistics, which demonstrated the importance of effective email subject lines. Let’s look at some other aspects.

The greatest pitfall involving email is neglecting the intent of the message and being unclear about that in the body of the message. You know what you’re asking, but if your message isn’t clear it can easily lead to a lengthy (and completely avoidable) string of back-and-forth messages.

In addition to being clear, it pays to be concise. The shorter the message, the likelier it is that you’ll receive an appropriate response (if one is required).

It also pays to take a minute and reread your message before hitting ‘send.’ This is particularly important when one considers the widespread use of phones for replying to emails. Regardless of the OS, overzealous autocorrect features will more often than not make changes according to what the software thinks you mean.

In the past, my phone used to drive me crazy because it would routinely change the word “copyediting” to “copycatting.” On more than one occasion, the message went through when I didn’t catch it.

When replying to messages, it can also be mission-critical to check your message before sending. The biggest point to pay attention to should be obvious: Have you answered all the questions? This is crucial. Many lengthy strings could easily be avoided if people ensured they were addressing all points in the messages they receive when they reply.

Regarding formatting, it can be very useful if used judiciously. Some email applications provide a slew of options for formatting within emails. A few points to consider:

• Avoid red except to highlight specific words. It can be tougher to read. It can also (albeit unintentionally) send a very negative subliminal message. Red can make it appear that the sender is angry.

• Avoid typing all in CAPS! This isn’t very common anymore, but years ago it was pretty common for people to put their CAPS LOCK on and type an entire message (or reply) in all caps. This makes it seem like the sender is yelling, which is never a good idea.

• Be careful with highlighting. How devices display colors varies greatly. Usually yellow is fine, but I’ve received messages where darker colors have been used. Particularly on a phone, these can be really hard to read.

Attachments are another area to pay attention to. Regardless of which email application you’re using, care must be taken to limit the number and size of attachments included with a message.

If you have more than two or three documents to attach, it is much more efficient and considerate of your recipient(s) if you compress them (e.g., put them in a folder and create a .zip or .rar file). 

Generally, it’s best to keep your attachment size capped at about 10 MB maximum. Anything larger than that can slow down the downloading of messages considerably, especially if the recipient is using a wireless connection. Also, some email servers may automatically block messages with heavy attachments. 

If you are sending a .pdf, consider saving it as a “reduced-size” .pdf. This can be done in Adobe Acrobat and in some other (but not all) programs that handle .pdfs.

Another area to consider is the priority level.

Using Microsoft Outlook as an example, two priority level choices are available when composing a new message: High Importance or Low Importance. If neither of these is selected, the message is considered the default, which is normal. Selecting High Importance inserts a red exclamation point (!) that the recipient sees in the inbox message list.

I do not advocate marking messages as “High Importance” unless that is truly warranted. Doing so with regularly can lead to “The Boy Who Cried Wolf” syndrome: people will assume that none of your messages are important.

In terms of the other choice, I don’t see much point of the “Low Importance” designation, which in effect instructs the recipient to ignore the message.

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