Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Become a Better Correspondent
In the previous chapter,
Take Control of Your Inbox
,
I looked at the ways you can improve
your management of incoming email. In this chapter we look at the flip side: handling
out-
going
email. I felt it was important to spend a few pages on this topic, because anyone who
doesn't exercise care in sending email becomes part of the problem for other people dealing
with their incoming mail.
Lots of people are bad at email—you can probably think of a few examples immediately—and I
want to make sure you're not one of them. But even if you're fantastic at sending email, I hope
the points I make in this chapter help you to set a good example and teach other people how
to improve their email skills.
Don't Be Part of the Problem
The most common mistakes people make when sending email aren't premeditated or mali-
cious; they're simply a matter of not thinking things through—of not looking at email from
the recipient's point of view. If your guiding principle is to send only email messages you'd be
happy receiving yourself, you're already well on your way to being a better correspondent.
But what counts as email courtesy isn't always obvious, so let me offer several specific tips:
•
Use Bcc for lists:
A few times a month, I receive an email message sent to
all the parents of my child's preschool by a member of the parents' association.
And all 108 addresses are in the To field, which means I have to scroll past them
when viewing the messages on my iPhone before I get to the message body. It also
means I know the email address of every other recipient, which not everyone is
comfortable sharing publicly.
When sending a message to multiple people—especially a long list, and even more
especially when they don't know each other—put
your own
address in the To or
Cc field, and put all the recipient addresses in the Bcc (blind carbon copy) field
(see
Message Header
). That way, each recipient's address is hidden from the oth-
er recipients. And they'll thank you for it.
•
Be careful with Reply All and Cc:
Suppose you're the recipient of a message
sent to multiple people, and their addresses are in the To or Cc fields. You might
be tempted to click Reply All out of habit, but please think before you do. Does
everyone else on that list really need to hear what you have to say, or just the
sender? Or perhaps a subset of the recipients? You can individually delete email
