Q: What has one eye and lurks in your office waiting to scare you to death?
A: Email!

Okay. I should have said “one i” instead of “one eye,” but you get the idea. Email is such a personal and demanding part of our daily routine, it can feel like we’ve neglected a close friend when we leave it unchecked for a day. It’s also one of those technologies we love to hate, and yet it has become an integral part of our work and personal lives.

Ten years ago, few of us even had home computers, let alone personal email accounts. communications at work. We needed special guidance to tell us how to communicate appropriately through email.

Witness the Netiquette articles in the IT Times of the early 90s. And guess what! That guidance still applies:

Previous Issues Suggestions for Writing Style in Electronic Communications More tips on Writing Style and Tact in Electronic Communications IT Times articles on Email Real Life Netiquette (1994) UC Davis Email Web site Staff Development and Professional Services

1. Advice from the 90s: Use the Appropriate Degree of Formality (“Take time to make sure no electronic communication embarrasses you later”). There’s some advice many of us regret having overlooked! It takes just one caustic remark coupled with the use of the ‘reply to all’ feature to make us glad for the existence of witness protection programs. Organization officials and attorneys who once may have overlooked electronic communications when conducting investigations now include it routinely. Emails are considered official communications and are discoverable in terms of legal proceedings. There is more than embarrassment at stake these days. Updated Advice: Don’t write anything in email you wouldn’t want to read aloud in court.
   
2. Advice from the 90s: Summarize What You Are Responding To (“When posting a response, summarize the parts of a message or article to which you are responding”). Always a good idea, especially when dealing with those of us—a growing number I might add–for whom every movie is a double feature! This is fairly easy advice to follow since the ‘reply’ function often automatically includes the text of the original message and all the ensuing correspondence. Although this sometimes means receiving an email the size of New Jersey, it’s better to see the whole picture before jumping into the fray with a response. The ‘reply’ function has the added advantage of keeping the same title throughout the correspondence, making it easier to locate all messages on a given topic. Updated Advice: Include the original and ensuing correspondence in your replies, and don’t change the subject line.
   
3. Advice from the 90s: Keep Paragraphs and Messages Short and to the Point (“Make your messages ‘concise,’ not cryptic”). Sing it, sister! Now that email is a major rather than minor form of communication, some of us (and I’m not mentioning any names here) haven’t figured out that it isn’t the best format for delivering philosophical treatises. What, I ask you, is more dismaying than being confronted with an email message that requires the use of the scroll button, three times? One practical way you can keep emails short is to simply reference a Web page where more information resides, rather than recreating all the info in the text of your email. If this doesn’t work you might also attach a document with more info, or even suggest a follow-up phone call. Updated Advice: Make your messages ‘concise,’ not cryptic. (Some things just don’t change.)
   
4. Advice from the 90s: Be Careful with Humor and Sarcasm (“…make sure people realize you are trying to be funny”). Since people can’t see your red rubber nose and big, floppy shoes when they get your emails, they really don’t know how funny you can be! It still pays to give a clear signal when you’re making a joke or being facetious. Typing in one of those happy faces will do, I suppose, but it’s much better to use clear, careful language. A more salient point is that not everyone wishes to be amused by their daily deluge of email. Therefore, it is not essential that you forward every humorous or pseudo-humorous email to all your friends and acquaintances. Updated Advice: Severely limit the number of frivolous emails you send or forward.

   Is there any new advice for the use of email in 2003? Get to know and use the powerful features of email. One that springs to mind is the filtering feature. It can help you sort and organize your correspondence and even dispose of emails from all those folks who don’t take the advice offered above (I am not wearing my rubber nose and floppy shoes as I write this).To update your email know-how, visit http://email.ucdavis.edu/ or consider taking the classes on Email Liability and Electronic Communications Essentials offered by Staff Development and Professional Services (http://sdps.ucdavis.edu/).