Apr 23


8 Deady Sins of Email

by Terry 23 April 2007


From the Seattle PI:

8 DEADLY SINS OF E-MAIL

  • The e-mail that’s unbelievably vague. “Where’s Bill?”
  • The e-mail that insults you so badly, you have to get up from your desk. “From what planet do you reside?”
  • E-mails that encourage cowardice. It is never OK to fire someone or break off a relationship this way.
  • The e-mail that puts you in jail. (The Justice Department has plenty of examples.)
  • The e-mail that won’t go away. “Thanks!” “Thank you!” “Tnx!”
  • Sarcastic e-mails. They are asking to be misunderstood.
  • E-mails to high-ranking people that are too casual. “Hiya!”
  • Inappropriate e-mail: anything racist, sexist, pornographic, homophobic or insensitive.

    • Source: “Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home”

I’d also include notes containing animated gifs, custom stationary, anything with more than one fwd, and TYPING IN ALL CAPS. (Hi, Mom!)

What would you add to the list?

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17 Comments

17 Responses to “8 Deady Sins of Email”

  1. earme on April 23rd, 2007 11:08 am

    Mass forwarding an email to the entire office using a distribution list set up for announcements, rather than picking and choosing a few friends to send it to.

    In my office this is done by the president of a sister company. He sends it to EVERYONE. Most of the people in my office wouldn’t recognize him if he walked into our offices.  (Quote)

  2. Gin on April 23rd, 2007 12:17 pm

    HTML email.  (Quote)

  3. Helen Losse on April 23rd, 2007 1:20 pm

    You’ve been awarded a THINKING BLOGGER AWARD at http://helenl.wordpress.com/2007/04/23/thinking-blogger-awards/  (Quote)

  4. M-dog on April 23rd, 2007 4:11 pm

    Forwarding things as attachments. There’s a secretary at my school who gets emails from the dept. head, which usually have word document attachments, and she forwards them to us as attachments. So to get to the message you have to open a word doc that’s an attachment of an attachment of an attachment. Argh!  (Quote)

  5. Terry on April 24th, 2007 8:25 am

    Welcome erme, and that’s for commenting! Mass distribution is evil. In most cases, it’s just junk.  (Quote)

  6. Terry on April 24th, 2007 8:26 am

    Thanks, Helen! I just did my list.  (Quote)

  7. Terry on April 24th, 2007 10:01 am

    Gin, getting rid of html mail would solve a lot of the problems that annoy me. I always reply in text only and try to break the cycle.  (Quote)

  8. Terry on April 24th, 2007 10:02 am

    Mere, some people even forward text as an attachment. Grrr ….  (Quote)

  9. Bluegrass Poet on April 24th, 2007 3:25 pm

    Sending 2 meg digital photos of the grandkids. Some of us still connect via modem whether we want to or not.  (Quote)

  10. Suburban Guerrilla » “He’s dead, Jim.” (from e-mail) on April 30th, 2007 8:42 am
  11. BroD on April 30th, 2007 4:06 pm

    Clarification: “Forwarding things as attachments.”
    E-mail is a great way to send files but e-mails should not be forwarded as attachments. You can’t do anything with them (like forward, reply or even print) except by copy & paste.  (Quote)

  12. T.G. Scott on May 1st, 2007 9:01 am

    Terry, I hate anything that is a chain e-mail asking me to forward it to 5-15 of my friends. I also hate things that are overly long. I don’t like to clog up my friends’ e-mail boxes with them either.  (Quote)

  13. Terry on May 2nd, 2007 8:31 am

    I hate those too, Tammy. I get dozens of them from my mother.  (Quote)

  14. ***Dave Does the Blog on May 7th, 2007 12:50 pm
  15. decrepitoldfool on May 7th, 2007 2:24 pm

    Attachments! You wait for Word to crawl up on the screen and scratch itself and there are thirty words in the attachment, plus some lame clipart. Couldn’t have just typed thirty words in an email message?

    And some people need to think about what a pixel is. If the picture is 2,600 pixels wide, and your screen is 1,024 pixels wide… Well yes, the software will shrink it down to viewing size after you have downloaded it.

    And my all time favorite: forwarding a message with 150 email addresses visible in it (or hidden in the header). Little do they know (ok, stop there!) that such messages are actually part of the spam cycle as the first infected machine it lands on will harvest every one of the addresses. If you must send me an email about how boycotting gasoline for one day will change the world, strip off all the visible addresses and learn to use BCC for cryin’ out loud!

    Ok, ok, calm thoughts. Deeeep breaths…  (Quote)

  16. Avocet on May 7th, 2007 3:50 pm

    Using ‘reply’ and leaving in the entire text of the email you’re responding to (which may contain the text of several previously-quoted emails), instead of just the line or two you’re actually addressing. :/  (Quote)

  17. Terry on May 8th, 2007 1:52 pm

    I hadn’t even thought about email harvesting in the huge address lists, DOF – yikes!

    Oops, Avocet, I’m guilty of that one.  (Quote)

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