How To Inform About Email Etiquette?

November 5, 2008 by Judith

How do you politely inform your friends who do not practice proper Email Etiquette that they need to bone up on the subject?

That’s a tough one… In my years of experience no matter how polite or “nice” you are in trying to explain the nuances of proper e-mail etiquette, many get defensive, have hurt feelings and some get downright mad! How dare you tell them what to do!?

The fact remains that all of us — each and every one of us — was thrown into this technology without any formal training. To think you “know it all” or have nothing more to learn is naive at best. Heck, I still learn something new each and every day and I’ve been online before most knew what online was!

I get e-mailed daily asking for a “nice way” to tell someone to not do this or that. What I then advise is to find the appropriate area on my site or one of my Email Etiquette articles that covers the issues you are concerned about.

Then when on that specific page, click on the little blue envelope “TELL A FRIEND” at the top right of the page and you can send them a link to that page. In your email simply state something like “I found this neat site that has a bunch of info on Email Etiquette. I learned a few things I wasn’t aware of and thought you would be interested too!”

By using the above, or by just sending them directly to my Email Etiquette 101, you are sending them to a valuable resource so they can read and learn and hopefully avoid them feeling as though they are being corrected.