Five Common Email Blunders

Email has revolutionised the way we communicate. It is instant, quiet, reliable and environmentally friendlier than printing out pages and pages of paper.

As with every modern marvel, there are the odd red flag here and there. Before you press send, check. It may make your message far more readable, and user-friendly.

A lot of people send email messages blissfully unaware of the problems that they are causing for other Internet users. Here area few common blunders with associated solutions and suggestions.

Check your attachments

Photos, documents, and movie clips that you attach to your email messages can be many megabytes in size. Internet access can be charged in megabytes – so if you send huge files, you may be unwittingly costing your recipient extra money. Think. How many angles of your cat/child/spouse looking adorable do people really want to see? Less can be more.

Photographs and movies can generally be sent in several formats – if you are just sharing for interest’s sake, choose to send lower resolution images. If you need a higher resolution, consider using a file sharing site like DropBox or save the high res versions to a memory stick.

Some internet hosts will block attachments over a certain size, meaning they are undeliverable. It pays to check with your recipient if you are sending anything larger than 10MB, before you hit the button.

Check your addresses

Imagine a solicitor sending out a change of address notice to all his friends, family, clients, court contacts, etc. And imagine if everyone who received the letter could see the name and email address of everyone else who had received the message. Major embarrassment – and undoubted breach of privacy.

Email programs give you a choice of 3 fields where to put addresses. Here's how to use them:

To: The main addressee – you can put multiple addresses here, and everyone who received the email will see them.
CC: The Carbon Copy field – everyone can see the addresses here too.
BCC: Blind Carbon Copy. The email will be sent to all the addresses in this field – and nobody will be able to see who else received a copy of the message.

If you are sending out a group email, also check who is in the group. It may pay to send several versions, depending on whether the recipients are colleagues, friends or family to avoid embarrassment.

Protect yourself and your computer

It has been shown that harmful programs will install themselves on your unprotected Internet computer in less than 30 minutes. Without an up to date, operational protection programs your computer could be:
– deleting or changing your files
– sending out squillions of email messages
– a "soldier" in a 50,000 strong bot-net "army" that is bringing some poor website to its knees.

If you use email your computer MUST have operational, up to date programs that protect it. Otherwise, it's almost certain that you are causing grief for yourself and other Internet users. Ask a friendly computer boffin to recommend a good security programme, install it correctly and update it to avoid dramas.

Time is precious

Try to keep your email messages brief, simple and to the point. Your recipients will appreciate it. There is still no substitute for talking to someone if there is an issue to resolve or a lot of information to impart. By all means follow up discussion points in an email, but it should not be your only form of contact.

Give them a clue

Always add a subject line to your email. Some people receive hundreds of emails a day and the subject like makes your message easier to refer back to.

A blank email subject line increases the chance that your message won't be read by the recipient.

It only takes a couple of seconds to put in something meaningful. This is basic good manners, and also makes it much easier to locate the message if you need it in the future.

Email is out there

Once you press send, your message can be distributed almost instantly to a large number of people.

Think before you rant, defame or criticise. You cannot rely on email being confidential. Be very aware of any email you send out from a company email address. An email is still a written document. Take the time to check your spelling, grammar, facts and figures. They may be used against you if you are not prudent.