Email Tips

• Use meaningful subject lines.
• Don't send unsolicited e-mail. Don't EVER send unsolicited commercial e-mail. (At UIC, your email privileges can be suspended.)
• In general, keep messages short and to the point.
• Don't quote the whole message just to respond to one line. Select text with the mouse and paste only the passages you are referring to into your reply. To quickly remove a (by default) large amount of text that you didn't want in the quote, click on its first word, then Shift-click on the last and hit Delete.
• Don't use all capital letters: IT READS LIKE YOU'RE SCREAMING.
• don't use all lowercase letters. it looks somewhat pretentious.
• Spell-check!
• Keep your signature file under 5 lines
• Be nice. Remember there's no tone of voice or body language with e-mail, so sarcasm doesn't usually translate well. You may want to lighten your message with a smiley :)
• When replying, check your to: and cc: fields. Make certain your message is going where you want it to go!
• And lastly, don't write anything in e-mail you wouldn't want your boss, your colleagues, your mother, or your children's children's children to read. E-mail can be endlessly forwarded and permanently archived, and while encryption (as well as the sheer volume of millions of e-mails crisscrossing the Internet every second) may guarantee some degree of privacy, there are no guarantees against old fashioned human error. If you call your boss a dumbhead in an e-mail, chances are you'll accidently send it to him or her.