My last few posts have been very instructional and aimed at a very specific audience, so let’s take a look at something from which we all could benefit. Being that it’s Friday and a beautiful day outside (hopefully your weather is gorgeous, too), let’s all roll up our sleeves, unbutton that top button, and enjoy a topic that’s both obvious and often overlooked at the same time. It’s time… to talk about email etiquette.

It’s a method of communication that many people say is dying, though that “many” does not seem to encompass a single person at the organization where I work, where emails fly back and forth like migratory birds confused by climate change. At my job, email exchanges are the norm for project communication, problem reporting, questions, and yes, even those most important messages of the day, what to do for lunch. While other methods of electronic communication are becoming more and more prevalent, be it texting, Twittering, Waving, etc., email is in no danger of going away just yet, which is why it’s always a good idea to review the following points from time to time. These points also have relevance in the new forms of communication, so they are definitely worth noting.

Speaking of texting, I can’t wait to see how the kids of today, who are quite adept at going over their monthly text message plan using less words than I’ve written in the above paragraph, manage communication in their careers in about 10-15 years. I’d bet it’s a popular topic of language arts grad students’ dissertations. But I digress.

Here are some email best practices in the workplace that I’ve noted over the years.  Follow these, and you almost assuredly won’t be secretly hated by those sitting around you… assuming you follow good hygiene, too.

• Keep your messages as concise as possible. Long emails tend to put off the receiver, who may start to despise you and curse your unborn children before he or she even begins to read your message. If you must, save additional talking points or questions for a follow-up email after you’ve gotten the receiver’s attention. Include just your most important point or question in the beginning.
• Unless your forwarding pictures of talking cats to your fellow coworkers, include a full email signature in at least the very first message you send or to which you reply. Important email conversations have a way of taking on a life of their own and getting forwarded to others later on. However, after a message has had a few responses, many email programs only show the name but not the email address of past recipients (I’m looking at you, Outlook!). So, if your message is one of the first in the email chain and one of the later recipients wants to get a hold of you, you can save him or her a lot of time by including a signature containing your email address or phone number so that they know how to to contact you. Oh, and if you are forwarding pictures of talking cats to your coworkers, there’s a good chance they are starting to despise you and curse your unborn children.
• Be selective of who you CC: on your emails. Back when I was fresh out of college, I had a bit of a rabble-rouser in me. I sent an email to our managers and copied my entire department about how our support issues weren’t being fairly distributed amongst our various regions, acknowledging our unspoken common frustration. The shared frustration became clear as I nearly caused an uprising among the ranks, something for which I got scolded. Our managers had no problem with me bringing up the issue, though I should have brought it up just with them and not copied everyone else. Without working out a solution to the problem with them first, I should have thought twice about copying everyone in our area on my message.
• 

  Careful with this button!

  Be very careful with the Reply All button. Only use it when everyone on the original email needs to see your response. One of my most memorable work memories is the follow-up to the above story. Even worse than my action, one of my fellow teammates sent me an enthusiastic follow-up email stating, “You go, Derek!”. Only, she too copied everyone in the department. Accidentally. Her scolding was worse than mine.

• Know your audience and keep your message professional where necessary. If you are contacting for the first time a senior manager from a different department or even a new client, don’t add a smiley face to your email. And for heaven sakes, watch your exclamation points (“Thanks!!!!!!!!!” actually appears to be part of the email signature of one individual I hear from a lot). Repeated punctuation is not very becoming of a professional email — this especially includes “???”.
• Perhaps most importantly, use the phone once in awhile. Every little question you have for someone doesn’t have to be done over email. You might actually save the other person some time in the process too, and make the world a happier place as a result.

If you have additional email tips that you’d love to share, let us know in the comments!