Introduction to Electronic Mail (email) Part 1 – The Niebaumian View by Jerry Niebaum

What are your objectives for using email?

A. Give information

B. Educate the reader

C. Entertain

D. Persuade

E. Request information

F. Order merchandise or services

How does email differ from a telephone call? A letter?

Do you ever get email that looks suspicious to you?

Specifically, what makes it look suspicious?

A. Sender unknown

B. Subject unfamiliar

C. Subject missing

D. Copied to persons you don’t know

E. Message has been forwarded from someone other than the sender

Does the above influence how you create your own email?

Email etiquette – don’t send e-mail without it.

A. Always include a meaningful subject line

B. Name the person(s) you’re sending to e.g. Hi Nancy –

C. Sign your email. Don’t assume someone will identify you from your address.

D. Attachments (e.g. Word documents, Excel charts, etc.) may be unreadable by your intended recipients

E. If you are responding to an email, don’t include the original message unless it is pertinent to your email as well. Especially, don’t send back pictures sent by the person you’re addressing, as this takes much more unnecessary network time.

F. Don’t forward email without adding your own comments e.g. “I enjoyed this and thought that you might also.”

G. By convention using capital letters is equivalent to shouting.

Suppose you receive and open and unwanted email and it contains an offer to “click here” to remove your address from this list. Should you do it?

What does CC or Cc mean? It is an abbreviation for “carbon copy”, which is a throwback to days of typing when carbon paper was used to send a letter to multiple persons.

What does Bcc mean? It is an abbreviation for “blind carbon copy,” which means that recipient receives a copy, but the addressee is not aware that a copy has been sent. If you are sending a message to multiple persons whose email addresses may be sensitive, do not list them in the “To” line or the “Cc” line. Instead, use the Bcc option to conceal the email addresses.

Examples using Outlook Web Access.