Because e-mail is such a new form of communication, new rules are developing. Keep the following “e-mail etiquette” points in mind when sending out messages.

Forwarding Messages

When dealing with e-mail, it's very easy to click the forward button to send to others when you want to share what you've received. Very likely you already get a number of these kinds of e-mails per day from friends who want to share jokes and other messages.

Be considerate of other people's busy schedules. Take a few moments before you forward the e-mail, and edit it for the following considerations:

• Delete the past e-mail addresses from the text of the e-mail. There's no reason to forward the complete history of the e-mail along with the message; this only serves to annoy people when they must scroll past pages of forwarded “from” lines that have nothing to do with the message itself. It also broadcasts e-mail addresses that some people may wish to keep confidential.

• Don't “comment out” the text. Follow this suggestion closely, especially if the message already has a number of comment characters at the beginning of the lines. This only serves to clutter up the message and contribute to the file size, without adding any value.

• Edit the subject line. A great deal of e-mail programs insert a “fwd:” comment at the beginning of the subject line. If a message is forwarded many times, these comments can quickly fill up the line. One “fwd” comment is sufficient to indicate that this is a forwarded message.

• Use the blind cc: option when forwarding to multiple people. There's no reason to include 200 e-mail addresses of your friends in the “To:” line. If you're sending something to a large number of people, use the bcc: option to suppress the listing of those e-mail addresses that aren't necessary for everyone to see.

Recently, e-mail viruses have caused companies to re-evaluate how they accept messages from outside sources. Some have gone to the trouble of denying all attachments, stripping away the attached files at the server before it hits the recipient's inbox, or deleting the e-mail altogether without delivering it. Therefore, it's always a good idea to obtain permission to send an attachment before you send it.