Tiffany Markman

You know when people write, ‘If you have any enquiries, please do not hesitate…’? It drives me demented. People don’t hesitate. They just click Reply. Email means quick, easy responses. It means rapid turnaround. It means records of who said what, when, to whom. But, no matter how many you get in a day, it need not also mean complex archiving or (more) time wasted.

When you reply to A’s email (Reply #1), keep her original subject line. But when she writes back (#2), and you respond a second time (#3), tweak the subject so that it more accurately reflects whatever you’re talking about in that message. This makes that email stream easier to locate once you’ve archived it, because the subject line isn’t a rabid stream of ‘Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Meeting’.

In the absence of a bounce-back, it’s safe to assume B got your mail. And B can assume you got his. There’s no need, unless you have to acknowledge, confirm or assure, to reply to every mail with a ‘Thank you’ or an ‘Okay’.

Extra: ‘Read receipts’ are extraordinarily irritating. Please don’t activate this function in your email, unless there’s a solid – i.e. legal – reason to do so.

Try not to forward a whole long email conversation to C, if she only needs to take one point from it. Rather take the time to send her a one-line email that sums up the message that’s relevant to her. And if she does need to read the entire story, clean up the stream by removing all of the unnecessary auto-text (the <<s, signatures and To, From, Date, etc.) and advise her to read it bottom-up.

Some emails contain info that’s proprietary to the company. Or conversations that you don’t want getting out. Or private skinner. Be careful when forwarding sensitive emails, because they can – and do – reach all sorts of unintended places. Don’t say things via email that you don’t want to have to defend later.

The ability to Cc people on email has led to a lot of what I call ‘professional a$-covering’. You’ll find that you get Cced on stuff not because it’s relevant to you, but because the sender wants it noted that he’s kept you in the loop.

The problem is that there’s often a 65-page attachment or several screens of waffle, and you’re not sure where in the haystack your particular needle lies.

So don’t Cc people out of a sense of duty, unless they really need to read every word. Rather send them a separate email, containing the stuff they need to know.

If you’re forwarding an email (especially a joke or holiday greeting) to lots of people and they don’t need to see the email addresses of the other recipients, Blind Copy (BCc) the whole lot. I can’t tell you how often I’m included in emails to the entire contents of someone’s address book, only to receive bucketloads of spam from someone on that very list a few weeks later.

Most of us read our email on a device other than our computer. So if an email isn’t absolutely time-critical (i.e. if Z doesn’t have to read it while standing in the queue at the bank, trying not to drive into another car or running his evening bath), please don’t use the High Priority marker (the !). What seems ultra-urgent to you may well be able to wait an hour, til Z’s in front of his laptop again.

Take the ‘Be honest’ rule a step further and use the Low Priority marker (usually a downward-facing blue arrow), if you have one, to indicate that an email is casual, personal or ‘For your interest only’. This is the height of good manners.