The Computer Corner
By Charles Miller, Nov 17, 2006


Hints from Emily (Web)Post

The Internet has been responsible for many new creations, including the word “netiquette,” which rhymes with etiquette—and for good reason.

Although there are no written laws of the internet, an implicit etiquette applies to email and newsgroups. Every one of the unwritten rules of netiquette are based on simple courtesy and plain common sense, yet they bear repeating from time to time.

Rule number one is to use mixed-case letters in your writing. Sending a message in all caps (UPPER CASE) is the equivalent of shouting. This is offensive to some readers, and as a practical matter the use of all caps in body text makes the message less readable.

Conversely, writers who eschew the use of proper capitalization and punctuation may be striving to imitate e e cummings but usually come across as either lazy or uneducated, or both. Your keyboard has a [Shift] key. Learn how to use it.

As a corollary, you should also avoid using outrageous font sizes or colors.

Mark Twain was supposed to have said that it was an unimaginative person who could not think of two or more ways to spell a word. That was only to cover up the fact he did not know how to use his spell-checker. Most email clients include a spell-checker, so please take time to learn how to use that, too.

Being deliberately cute with spellings such as “gimme da 411 fer da turkee dinnaa et yo mamaz plaaaz” gets very tiresome very quickly. Worse, if you wrote like that to my mother you might have gone without an invitation to Thanksgiving dinner! Generally speaking, if your spell-checker has trouble digesting this type of spelling, then so will your readers.

All emails should begin with a subject line in order to give the reader some idea of what the message contains. All too often, the subject line is the only thing the recipient is going to read before hitting the “delete” key, so please do not ignore the subject line. 

Use informative message subject lines. Be specific and precise. Emails with vague subject lines or no subject lines at all are the ones likely to be ignored or deleted.

When generating a reply to an email, please take time to delete the original message, only leaving essential segments of the original message you are replying to. Also, when forwarding messages, take time to “clean up” the message by deleting the dozens of email addresses appearing at the top of the message. Not only is this common courtesy, but some anti-spam software picks up on messages with lots of @ signs and labels those messages as spam or chain letters. Your message could get branded as spam if you have a lot of @ characters in it.

When you participate in a listserv (a mailing list), be mindful that dozens or perhaps thousands of people will read your message. The biggest mistake people make is forgetting that hundreds of people will read their reply, so sometimes a personal response to one person would be more appropriate than sending your message to the entire list of subscribers.

Again, there are no written laws of the internet, but those who generally adhere to these standards are perceived as courteous and those who do not are frequently less highly regarded.


Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044-415-153-8528, or email FAQ@SMAguru.com