E-mail has revolutionized communication. It enables us to connect with people as far away as Tokyo and Sydney in a split second, and helps us be more productive. But it also has enormous potential to offend, anger, bombard, confuse and overwhelm its recipients. After all, it doesn’t have the benefit of body language, tone of voice, and other distinctly human elements that are necessary for message context.

Your best defense against a message recall failure is to reread your message before you send it.

Although we should all know proper e-etiquette by now, a gentle reminder is needed now and again. (See this article, which illustrates how much damage a hastily sent e-mail can cause.) Below are a few timeless tips for keeping your communication professional and not at all offensive to your colleagues. (Tips are for Outlook versions 2000-2007, except where noted otherwise.)

Reply to All with Care

By MaryHazel McDermott

Reply to All is an option available in Outlook and many other e-mail programs that should be used sparingly. When you use Reply to All, you may be sending your message to scads of people who do not even need the information. You may just be junking up their inboxes with unnecessary missives.

Use Reply to All only for collaborative messages where everyone addressed needs the information.

For most messages, the normal Reply feature should be used — especially if only the sender needs the information. Another thing to consider before using Reply to All: If there are several people, but not all, who need the information, it is better to add a few addresses to the Reply rather than blast everyone with your response.

(Keyboard shortcuts: Reply is Ctrl+R and Reply to All is Ctrl+Shift+R.)

Think Before You Send (Recalling a Message)

By PC Helps staff

Only a few e-mail programs have a recall feature, and all of them, including Outlook, have limitations that might cause them to fail when you most want them to succeed. Your best defense against a message recall failure is to reread your message before you send it. (I know – sounds like something your mother would say.) If it is an important message that doesn’t need to go out right this minute, you might want to wait an hour before you send it so you have time to read it again.

To recall a message:

1. Open the sent item that you want to retrieve.
2. Click the Actions menu and choose Recall This Message (Outlook 2007: Click the Message tab, select the Other Actions drop-down arrow, and choose Recall This Message).
3. Select “Delete unread copies of this message,” then check “Tell me if recall succeeds or fails for each recipient,” and then click OK.

Message recall can fail for a number of reasons: an e-mail was sent to an address outside the company; the message already has been read; or the recipient is not logged into the e-mail program at the time the message was sent.

Stop Your Shouting (Using All Caps)

By Steven Mak

This tip is applicable to any form of written communication, whether it’s electronic or old-school pen and paper. When dealing with a text-only communication method, the use of all capital letters is considered shouting. Unless you are actually shouting, do not use all caps; in the event that typing in all caps is unavoidable, please include a disclaimer to explain why.

Besides being perceived as yelling, text rendered in all caps is crowded and thus harder to read. It is also counterproductive; when one word is in capital letters among a group of lowercase letter words, there is clear emphasis, but when all words are in all capital letters, nothing stands out.

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