Email is here to stay. We all get hundreds of emails on a daily basis so I’m not going to bother ranting about how I hate it and I wish it would go away. That being said, I do have a couple of pet peeves that I’ll point out and stand up on the soapbox for a couple of minutes and bitch about.
Three Email Pet Peeves
1. The “Reply To All” button. Folks, if you get an email addressed to you with other people CC’d on it 9 times out of 10 that means the original author WANTS to keep the other people in the loop. If you don’t hit “Reply To All” when you respond all you’re doing is making it so the original author is going to have to FORWARD your response to the other people on the list.
There are obvious exceptions to this (I.E. when you’re going to throw the original author under the bus and you’re being polite, when the reply is sensitive in nature, etc.) but in general terms if you see multiple people CC’d on an email that you get, do the right thing and hit “Reply To All”.
2. Using the Subject Line as your email. I’m sure you’ve all run across this one too. You get an email with the subject line of “You up for some drinks tonight?” and then you open the email hoping to find some more information only to find a blank body. STOP THAT. Actually that example isn’t all that great. The ones I’m really referring to are stuff like this:
SuBJECT: “I’ve got to ask you a question about the project that you’re going to be delivering on Friday. The client called me and said…”
BODY: blank
What the hell people!!! I understand the thought process here (you want to make your subject line stand out with all the hundreds of other emails that its competing against) but please… just stop.
3. Replying to one thread with another. You know the threads… back and forth about a particular issue. The subject lines all reading the same thing – RE: Check this out
So your email inbox looks something like this:
RE: Check this out
RE: Check this out
RE: Check this out
Look at this amazing employment opportunity!!!
RE: Check this out
RE: Check this out
Please her tonite!
RE: Check this out
RE: Check this out
You get the picture. Then all of a sudden the person that you’re talking to in the “Check this out” thread starts talking about something COMPLETELY different. STOP THAT. Start a new thread with a new subject line.
