As technology evolves more and more, it becomes more commonplace in our daily lives. This includes the wonderful communication tool called email.
Electronic Mail or email is both a money and time saving tool. As we know it is used for everything from talking to your financial institution to meeting a new friend. I, just as some of you reading this, have even known people who have met their spouses online or at least someone they hope one day will become their spouse.
However, because this form of communication is both fast, easy and the person doing the talking is well hidden from the view of the other person, there are times that people forget their manners.
Manners or Netiquette as it is called here, should always be observed if one wishes to effectively communicate with the other party that is receiving the email or in some cases instant message. For example, if I were looking for a pen pal and ran across an interesting looking person. I would send them a short, polite (unless you definitely do not want a friendship) letter and try to check spelling and wording before I sent it to make the best impression possible.
For example, one big turn off when chatting online or emailing someone is the use of abbreviations. U know the Type. U R going to really not think much of this person for using these types of short cuts. To me, this is rude and/or lazy. Definitely NOT a good impression.
Now, say that you miss understand something I say in a letter to you. In my opinion it is bad netiquette to come back at me with a string of cursing words. And while we are on the subject of cursing, lets not forget the foul mouthed people who choose to become very aggressive simply because they can hide behind their computer. Or, simply because they were never taught any manners, and choose to fill their messages and other communications with language that could curl your toe nails.
Definitely a bad move.
Well, what is right or what is acceptable in the way of behavior on the net?
For one, try to plan what you are going to write before you write it. For example, if you are prone to swear words and feel that there is nothing wrong with those words but do not really want to run the chance of offending anyone, then type it out on a word processing program and read over it a few times. As you read over what you have written, sometimes you can see where you could have skipped a curse word or some other language that might insult the party in which it was intended. This is also an excellent opportunity to correct any spelling mistakes you may have made. I do this for every review or article that I have posted on the web and while the number here is small in comparison with other sites I have written for in the past, it adds up to over six hundred articles and reviews over the last couple of years. From this, I can tell you that if you will use a word processing program to write things before you put them on any communication, you can save time and mistakes. Which in turn, at times, has saved me from offending someone. Especially if I were writing on a sensitive subject.
Another problem I personally have had is the amount of attachments that is sent to my email box. With all the worms and viruses that are being passed around on the web daily, why would anyone want to open an attachment? I never open an attachment. To be polite, I first send the person sending me the attachment a nice letter stating that due to security reasons I do not open attachments. If the person continues to send me mail with attachments I add them to my ignore list or simple delete their mail as soon as it hits my box. It matters not if the person sending me the attachment was my best friend, I do not open them. People need to either learn how to copy and past or to honor the other persons choice regarding attachments.
Also, there is the forward issue. “Oh, this looks cute! I am going to send it to so and so person.” I know, I have thought this ten thousand times or more, and usually do forward it onto the other person. However, I will copy and paste it into an email. When I do this, I try to take out any annoying headers or footers to try to make the email appear the neatest possible. This way hopefully the other person will enjoy the email.
In Closing
While I am sure there are other things that people find that annoy them on the web. We all need to remember that the web is like a school. There are students that have just gotten their training wheels and are cruising the web for the first time without much knowledge or thought about how it works. It is also easy to forget that you are putting something out on the web that anyone can see. How would you feel if you ran across a page with something offensive on it. People do read what is on the web, real people that like me sometimes lives too much in a cyber world. But we are reading, and remembering.
Thank you for reading.