
How to send and reply to email - p4bl0
http://matt.might.net/articles/how-to-email/
======
toast76
There is only ONE rule you need to follow. \- Speak to people how they would
like to be spoken to.

I get so annoyed with all this email rules BS. 5 sentences max, Twitter-style
"body in subject", dot points only etc etc. All a load of crap.

You don't need rules. You need to learn some simple etiquette.

If someone always writes to you starting with "Hi Alan", then you better be
sure you reply with "Hi Bob". If someone (important) takes the time to write
you a well thought out, detailed email, you bloody well take the time to reply
in kind. If someone writes to you in dot points, then and only then is it ok
to reply in dot points.

Being curt with someone who appreciates detail is just as bad as being verbose
with someone who appreciate brevity.

~~~
jonnathanson
True, but I do think there are more general rules that can be applied
categorically. Be precise, for example. If you find yourself using a lot of
"and/or" statements in an email, or qualifying a point you're making, then
you're probably not being as precise as you could be. Some people like long
emails, and some people like short emails, but nobody likes vague or confusing
emails.

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run4yourlives
> If the entire email fits in the subject, put it in the subject.

There is a special place in hell for the people that do this. I'll hope you
get there as fast as possible.

Seriously, Just because you have preview windows set to display the subject as
a paragraph, doesn't mean I've got the same set up on my blackberry. If you
want me to answer, write the text of the email where it friggin belongs, not
in the subject line.

~~~
Goladus
The author is not suggesting to cram a substantial paragraph into the subject
line. That comment comes directly after a suggestion to limit the subject to
72 characters or less.

If your blackberry cannot handle 72 characters that's a mail reader limitation
most people don't have.

~~~
ryanlchan
This, combined with a polite [EOM] tag, makes subject-messages much more rapid
than writing a full email. I have much more rage at people who type e-mails
with nonsensical subject lines that are just as long than their body content.

Would you rather have someone email you with:

1) _Subj_ : Can you print an extra copy of the Excel for 10AM? Thanks! [EOM]

2) _Subj_ : Quick request for you before our meeting today _Body_ : Can you
print an extra copy of the Excel for 10AM?

Personally, I much prefer the first.

~~~
jamesbritt
_Personally, I much prefer the first._

Do most people know what [EOM] means? I'd never seen it before. Given the
context I guessed it means "end of message" or "entirety of message", but were
I to have first seen it as part of an E-mail I'd have no idea and would just
go read the body.

~~~
brown9-2
Eom or n/t seems like the kind of thing that you figure out the very first
time you see it.

~~~
a-priori
The first time I saw it, I thought they forgot to type a message.

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RyanMcGreal
> If the entire email fits in the subject, put it in the subject.

> If you think that's rude, it's not.

Maybe not rude, but awkward nonetheless when you're trying to reply to it.

~~~
hessenwolf
It's really annoying on my android device, especially when people put a link
in the subject line.

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RomP
I wish the point about adding and removing people to the thread had some more
rules, like:

* if people are added to the thread, the body of e-mail should start with [adding A and B so they can {do X}];

* if people are removed from the thread, they should be BCCed and the first line of the e-mail should read [BCCing C and D for now to minimize the noise].

Also, can't really agree with the breaking up e-mails point. It's usually
costlier to follow extremely branchy thread than to filter the relevant points
from a linear thread.

[edited for formatting]

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j_baker
I get annoyed by people that are so anal about email. I don't disagree that
these rules help. It's just that It really seems like these kinds of rules
miss the forest for the trees.

The ultimate criteria of a good email should be if the recipient can easily
read and understand the email, not whether you're quoting people properly or
using bullet points rather than paragraphs. Sure those things help, but it's
possible to write a good email that breaks all these rules or a bad email that
follows these rules to the letter.

~~~
hessenwolf
And if you can do that successfully without help, then more power to you, but
lots of us need things to be given explicitly to wrap our weak minds around.

~~~
j_baker
Why? Don't _you_ receive email? What kinds of emails do you like to receive?

~~~
hessenwolf
I receive emails, and I know what kind of emails I like to receive. However, I
am not particularly representative (find me a mathematician who is), so there
is little value in extrapolate my desires to others.

~~~
j_baker
Why not? There's nothing wrong with having a different approach, nor does
being a mathematician necessarily make you bad at email.

~~~
hessenwolf
You don't know anybody who gets offended by things that you don't get offended
by?

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notyourwork
How do you explain to people that emails regarding leftover popcorn downstairs
in the office and the like are not "high importance"? This gets my every
single time. I see the red flag and think interesting this has to be important
otherwise why would they have added the flag and then sure enough get fooled
every time. Perhaps I should consider the high importance flag to really mean
this email is not important.

~~~
epochwolf
At my first programming job we had a solution for this. Everything generated
by computer was filtered into a folder named for the application or mailing
list that cause the email to be sent to us. My entire team did this. It meant
that any truly important email from individuals or management ended up in our
inbox instead of a folder. I had an additional filter set up so that anything
labeled "high importance" was dropped into an "X-Important" folder. I would
read those after I got bored reading the Marketing, Art Department and Support
mailing lists.

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jbk
As someone who answers a lot of e-mails every day (VLC support in my free-
time), I wish people would actually follow those kind of rules...

Though, I wish there was a point on politeness and about the "tone" of an
e-mail.

~~~
mattmight
This is a great suggestion. I'll add this in to the article.

Politeness is so important that I've set my email "signature" to "Thanks!"

More often than not, it's appropriate to leave it in.

~~~
j_baker
There's more to being polite than setting your signature to "Thanks!" In fact,
it's more likely to come off as inauthentic fluff than actual politeness.
Which is more polite?

    
    
        If you frobulate the widgets one more time, 
        I'll kill you.
    
        Thanks!
    

Or:

    
    
        I know I'm being a pain about this, but could you
        please not frobulate the widgets anymore?

~~~
forkandwait
Dont underestimate the importance of "inauthentic fluff" -- such is the basis
of courtesy and grace. I think dropping the fluff because is seems inauthentic
(whatever that means) is THE basic social interaction mistake made by
programmers and other math-y people.

~~~
j_baker
I'm not arguing against having manners, I'm just saying that they're not
enough. You can't say something rude and then make it all better with a token
"please" or "thank you".

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X-Istence
The bigger issue in this case is that Outlook's quoting style is so thoroughly
broken that you are unable to do inline replies within Outlook.

Outlook also forces the user to type above the previous email because of it's
non-existent quoting support...

~~~
ilikejam
If you set Outlook up to convert to plain text, you get normal '>' style
quoting when you reply. It also has the advantage that anyone replying to your
mail sends in plain text by default as well.
<http://support.microsoft.com/kb/831607>

~~~
jodrellblank
That's not an advantage. We've lost the "email should be short plain text"
war, and we have to deal with real email which is coloured, formatted, fonted,
has images and attachments and signatures and so on.

Auto-switching email like that to plain text makes it difficult to read,
screws up the layout, and loses information entirely.

~~~
ilikejam
Each to their own, I suppose. I mail a _lot_ of copy-pasta from shell output,
so not having to switch to plaintext manually saves time. To be honest the
sort of mail that's multicoloured / multifont / etc. generally isn't worth
reading, let alone replying to; but that's just my experience.

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InclinedPlane
I'd add one thing to this list: take the effort to regularly summarize the
results of complex and long email threads, most especially when they are
highly technical.

State assumptions plainly. Sum-up results. State action items bluntly. Add
assumptions and results from in-person meetings. Don't force people to follow
the convoluted and disjointed ramblings of a long email thread in order to get
up to speed. Not only does it waste time and effort it also doesn't guarantee
that everyone ends up on the same page, as many email threads on complex
topics often include blind alleys, vague assertions, and abandoned options.

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kleiba
My screenwriter friend used to get into arguments with me whenever I replied
to her points inline. She saw my "chopping up her email" as an act of cruelty.
:-)

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hoopadoop
We have reached the bottom of the barrel when how to send an email is on the
front page of hacker news

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nradov
Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox article from 1998 on "Microcontent: How to Write
Headlines, Page Titles, and Subject Lines" is still very relevant.
<http://www.useit.com/alertbox/980906.html>

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masnick
Now: how do you politely tell people to follow these guidelines?

~~~
_ques
Codify these guidelines into a "Standard". Give it a name, say "Email
Efficiency Specification". In your automated footer, add:

"This email was composed to comply with the Email Efficiency Specification:
<http://eespec.org>

Once it gets some traction, have profs at b-schools / PHBs at corps mandate
it. To sell the idea, call it the 7th sigma or something.

~~~
rwmj
There is this old RFC (from 1995):

<http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1855.html>

It doesn't seem to have had much effect, sadly.

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kapilt
> If there are things that the recipient must do, place them up top instead of
> burying them in the body.

Amen to that. At cruxly.com, we have figured out a way to detect just that and
give an alternate view of messages.

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code_duck
Some of this is good advice that I wish people would follow. I receive a fair
amount of email asking questions that are answered on our website.

Other points are subjective, or opinions. Most people I write to expect that I
will have a conversational tone, not a terse IM style or a 'list of points'.

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ronnier
I do not like subject only emails. When I have such a message to send, I copy
it to the body.

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BenSS
Most of these 'rules' simply won't work everywhere. Stop getting hung up on
your (or their) particular format.

\- Respect the recipient's time. Be brief as possible, but not vague.

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saard
My golden rule: "people’s time is precious"

<https://www.boldport.com/blog/?p=234>

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Kwpolska
Five sentences? Not enough for me. And everyone else on mailing lists.

