Think before you hit send...

November 7, 2005

This isn't so much about the content of emails as the really dumb things some people do on a daily basis with the very act of sending an email. I can name five or more people off the top of my head who are guilty of any of these...fine people, otherwise intelligent people...but guilty nonetheless.

Thank you to the always wonderful Merlin Mann at 43 Folders (and my favorite, 5ives.com) for this:

  1. The liberal use of the “VERY HIGH PRIORITY!!!” flag
  2. The 18-line sig about all the Bad Things that will happen to me if I ever reveal the contents of your privileged, confidential (and unencrypted) message
  3. The unrequested press release (and the serial ignoring of the “Unsubscribe” I sent you for the previous seven press releases)
  4. The graphical background, font and table tags, and remaining 14k of HTML cruft associated with every. single. message. you’ve ever sent
  5. The including of my — plus 98 other strangers’ — personal email addresses in the “To:” line of your friendly reminder about Tyler’s birthday party

And let's not forget 17 layers of forwarding headers, and >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.

My favorite is the person I know who will reply to something her friend sent her, but adding to the cc: a bunch of new people she wants to forward it to. The result is a reply to something that you've never seen before, with a single word/line reply to the original sender...usually somehting like "CUTE!" And then 17 layers of forwarding headers.

"CUTE!" is my cue to hit "DELETE!"

I'm sure she thinks she is being clever and eliminating the step of dealing with this email twice, but SHE IS ANNOYING EVERYONE.

Sigh.

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