Discussion on:

Four email types that can drive you crazy

Do you really get e-mail from doctoral candidates? Are they asking for jobs or requesting to use your material? Enquiring minds want to know!

I'm guessing the laughing keyboard emoticon is the :-D one vs. the one. I would think is more like screaming; the :-D looks more like LOL.

I hate top posters! All publications are written top to bottom. Why do people email their response on top? If I am coming into an email exchange after it has started, catching up requires starting at the bottom and then going up and down for each exchange. It's dumb and selfish.

The other thing I hate are people who are too damn lazy to trim before replying. Again, if we have had 5 or 6 email exchanges on the same topic, I don't need to see the entire text of all of them in your latest email reply.

This is a very informative post.

I know these 4 classes of e-mails. An e-mail should be written in the form that the circumstances require.

People should write e-mail using the same rules to write a post letter. You are right that communication should not be burdensome.

The person who used all lower or upper case with NO punctuation.

the emailer who sends pure non-sense, requiring a response to correct their info, they will argue back via email, requiring further response w/ explanation broken down to the simplest finite detail, then they still argue back with more non-sense.... and all the while they will not pick up the phone to have it simply explained. I have resolved that my communication with this person after the first response attempt is best left at a response that says 'call me' or 'check your voice mail'.

When every email a person sends is in all red caps and an important flag, after while I just ignore them. If there really is an emergency, I would have no idea.

Between Type I, the Doctoral Candidate, and Type 3, the Out-Of-Context Puzzler, it's hard to tell where the line should be drawn.

If I am involved in a conversation with another person on several topics (as happens), I would prefer the Doctoral Candidate hands down. Of course, most of the people I correspond with regularly have doctorates or at least college degrees, so perhaps it's a kind of nepotism.

The sort that irks me no end is the sort from someone who wants me to do him or her a favor and sends me something like this:

hey i need to meet with u bout why i didnt com mon answer me back

So allegedly this person had an appointment on Monday, but did not "com" (presumably, come) on that day, and wants to make another appointment. He or she couldn't be bothered to show up or to let me know in advance, but demands a response to the request for an in-person meeting to explain the circumstances? The effort it takes me to decipher this little gem is more than the writer has expended so far, and I tend not to appreciate that.

People need to learn how to edit the subject line as the subject changes. When the thread has gone through multitudinous topics, and it still has the original topic on the subject line, I think I'm opening "Alice in Wonderland" only to find it is now "Canterbury Tales", has wandered thru The Illiad" ??fter they initially discussed the Mad Hatter's Tea Party

One day I offer this email service for free.

Ming.

Gen Y???ers who write emails like a SMS using word shortcuts like "u" for "you.", and "plz" for "please". If your using a full qwerty keyboard, and have access to a spell checker, there is no excuse for abusing the English language like that. I've even seen shortcuts like this in job applicants emails (which I instantly deleted).

I have a manager who constantly requests emails to be re-sent to him, usually containing links to documents or sites, or with documents attached. Often it will be the third or fourth re-send of the same item. If you're going to use email, learn how to use it efficiently. Don't use the Delete key unless you're sure you won't need it again.

Reading your article... oops, too long. short on time, like everyone else. Gotta Go.

I hate it when people forward crap emails on to me but leave all the barnacles on, you know, those "This message may contain information that is of a confidential nature ........." bits on the end of emails that just add size to an email with no value. Has anyone ever heard of a court case where a barnacle made any difference to the outcome?
Also I dislike those that don't delete the last list of victims, sorry, recipients, so any spammer can harvest a pile of addresses, including mine, to spam.

In business related emails, I can't stand it when someone does not have their contact info in their signature, specifically office and/or mobile phone numbers. In my field and position, I am often not at a computer most of the day and am not able to easily look up people's contact info, but do have easy access to emails. Yes, I understand it adds size to an email, but ALL email clients (even phones) allow you to include an automatic signature at the end of messages. Just put your phone number there, is it too much to ask?

I also agree with the no subject peeve and the random quote signature peeve.

...that all this is moot. Just as we've figured out what the etiquette is for email, mobile comes along and makes email obsolete. Who cares what your emails look like? Everyone's texting or making social site updates.

My teenage children only use email to confirm registration for social networks or web services.
Emails will fade away as baby boomers retire.

I sent hand-written snail mail 3 times a week for the first 2 years. (university romance continued) 20 years later and she still has them all. How many kids these days will have that? What are they going to do? Put it all on a USB stick?

Let's not forget those people who try to fit the entire message in the subject are (which gets truncated) and then they leave the message area blank. Now you've got about the first 6 words of their message.

Don't forget the emailer that insists on TYPING EVERYTHING IN BOLD CAPS only. No matter how many times you (politely) ask or try to educate them on email etiquette. Regrettable, I will ultimatly just unfriend them or jettison thier email to the spam folder.

Especially the ones who make they're own misteaks while correcting others! For instance,

Regrettable, I will ultimatly just unfriend them or jettison thier email to the spam folder.

You meant, of course, *Regrettably, *ultimately, *their in the above sentence.

Yes, I know, I made mistakes while pointing out the mistakes of the previous poster. It's an attempt at irony. My apologies if it wasn't funny.

Reply / forward an e-mail starting a new conversation and leaving the old subject line as well as the trail of old text.

The trail of the conversation is so indented that you get a few characters per line. Whoever "invented" indenting replies should be roundly wet noodled.

I used to have a staff member who would send out meeting invitations to groups of people without saying what the meeting was. She did that because her address book had the group listed by the meeting organization but when she sent it, the group broke down and all I would receive was the list of people in her group. I could never tell what the meeting was about, who was attending (she usually sent it out to more people than were active in the group) and if I was supposed to attend. Her one email would usually turn into a two or three message exchange.

One word answers with a 12 line signature attached. Especially with a top posted thread that I have to filter through to find the relevant information.

Everyone knows by now that email disclaimers are not legally enforcable. Second of all, people that print their email for some reason are most likely already aware of the environment and simply don't care.

The worst ones i get are the ones with no subject and the one word email (usually yes or no, with no explanation).

I agree about the Forwards. And I too get tied of of the verbose types, so I learned to scan and request "just the facts" from some senders. But between all the four types, is there any room for being human? Maybe we should all be in lockstep and write using standardized formats like good little machines? (Or, maybe a little tolerance . . .?)

What I get at work all the time is a forward about a particular issue, and a totally non related question about something else in the top of the message... I also love the ones where the prior header is bigger than the message itself...

I hate BCC emails. What do they want you to do when you are BCC'd? Nobody else can see that you have been emailed and the email isn't for your action. I never trust a person who BCC's. The only time for BCC's is for forwarding something that you don't want the others to know you are forwarding.

Signatures that emailers use to make us think they are clever. Signatures that are 2 pages long disowning any responsibility the company has if the emailer sends you any information and people who include 2 pages of other people's signature when they forward other peoples mail to you.

When you sneak someone a "bcc:" of a message, just to keep them informed on the sly, and they "Reply All" to the message. I have a short list of people I don't bcc: anymore.

A colleague (now retired) used to emphasise his emails by writing them in the largest font size he could persuade Lotus Notes to use.

If he was particularly anxious to get a response his email would arrive in 62 point bold block caps.

Needless to say this often prompted the opposite response to the one he wanted.

The folk who never reply to an email, but months later will admit it was received.

The folk who never send a personal note, only forwarded BS; usually about a virus/trojan that will blow up your PC after it melts your brain; and MS knows all about it AND IT IS REAL !!!!

Surprisingly we all get along as well as we do.
Most all these things mentioned here are the very things people have complained about for years in all forms of communications.

As for CAPS-LOCKING. I have clients that leave the caps lock on all day because of their programs and apps that they work with every day. Their IT Dept. tells them to do this since 99% of what they enter needs to be in CAPS. In turn they email people with it still stuck on. Hey, it happens, so deal with it I guess. Luckily I know this and I give them a break.

As for not getting back to you... YES I hate that. I just received an email from another reseller similar to the one I work for. He was supposed to help me fix a product that his company sold us (and that we turned around and support for a local customer). He wouldn't get back to me after many emails asking for his help (after all he sold it to us, right?), yet I could see the read receipt, so I know he got them. (By the way - who hates people that use this feature in Outlook? - because... I use it). Anyway,
over a month later he replied to my last email and said he was sorry, he was very busy at work as things got crazy there. Yet he never answered my question - again. I guess he figure it was a dead issue after not hearing from me after a month or so. Not a good support practice.

People are people. We have to live with one another and with all their faults.

Now get back to work you people!

One of my users will randomly CC or FWD an e-mail conversation, fully intact from the very first e-mail communication without saying anything that the recipient needs to take from the e-mail. The sad part is that he's one of the upper management and also is in the line of users who puts nothing in the body or nothing in the subject when he needs tech help. Being vague in digital communication is one of the most difficult things to decipher.

If you CC me, and address me directly in the email, don't be surprised if my response is not timely - as we all agree, we're busy, if you want my attention now, you'd better take the extra step to put me as an addressee on the TO line and remove me from the CC line.

Secondly, if you REPLY or REPLY ALL and change the subject, THEN CHANGE THE SUBJECT LINE! The email server will not explode if you do this, and no one cares about the old email chain still in the body that led you to drift the subject - we can read, seeing that the new subject had branched from the other potentially still going on.

Working in computer programming careers means dealing with a lot of people and unfortunately, half of those people can't send a proper e-mail. Thanks for voicing what I believe so many of us are also thinking.

There is the chain-letter type email that falls into the three categories, the third of which is a combination of the other two. First is the one which is a forwarded email that not only lists the bulk of the previous recipients, but also the actual forwarded "original" message.repeated by each sender so that after 25 forwards you get a previous, previous, previous, etc, etc, etc, email correspondence trail of the original message. With each drop-off you get a list of all who received it down to the last person sending it. By the time you get through scrolling to your sender, you have a chain strung of the same message all ready for the next forwarding. Another type comes across as a threat of bad luck if ignored, and quite nicely of great good fortune if positively responded to. And the third is a combination of those two sometimes with tons of twinkling, dazzling, flashing emoticons and ads. Spammers/hackers probably delight in getting or stumbling into these emails.

a multitude same message in

So I don't know if it's been mentioned yet (I don't have the time or inclination to read nearly 200 comments), but I strongly dislike sending out an email that asks the recipient if he or she wants to do A or B and I get back a reply that says "yes" (or "no").

You know the ones. There's the classic "forward this to all your friends or you'll lose an eye". And a similar breed of "major catastrophic virus discovered, you must immediately turn off your computer and call the police" and such. The worst thing is, a lot of people actually fall for this stuff. As an IT admin I have no problem spotting these fakes but I do feel pity for the poor folks who do not know how things work and take this stuff seriously. Like, OMG!!!!!!! >:) r u ok? =P
Personally I don't respect the current "internet generation" at all - they think they're the center of it all like they know anything about anything. And a quick gripe if I may, whoever came up with the word "blog" is a tool. Yes, a blog in of itself is a great tool for communication, but the evolution of some of the current phrases to describe "Internet lingo" just makes me long for IRC again. At least we're done away with the "information superhighway". Oh yeah, and people that write emails that can't stay on topic suck too

I agree with you about the out of context type of message and also about the stream of consciousness type because they violate basic rules of communication. However, the other two seem to be much harder to criticise except on a subjective basis

So I would like to hear a logical explanation that justifies a particular way of writing an e-mail. This means NOT appealing to arguments based on consensus - everybody does it that way or to arguments based on authority - someone says it should be done that way.

Examples would help to illustrate what you hold to be the correct method.