E-Mail - The 7 Deadly Sins

How to really mess up a great concept

In June 1995, Kishore Bhargava and I were planning a seminar tour. We were finalising the "story line" of the seminar - with me sitting in Bangalore and Kishore in Delhi.

In a span of about 2 hours, we sent each other almost 50 messages, occasionally dragging in other friends into the discussion, seeking advice and suggestions from them. It was almost a real time conference, and looking at the saved messages today, I marvel at what we achieved.

Today, when virtually anyone can have an e-mail account, thanks to VSNL's low priced Internet services, the number of messages we PC Quest columnists and editors receive daily is staggering. Before VSNL's services came into the picture, I used to receive something like 20-30 messages a day - today that number sometimes crosses a hundred messages. PC Quest receives close to 4000 messages a month from readers alone! The input from our readers has helped us make our magazine what it is today.

Electronic Mail is probably the real "world shrinker" - not air travel. Using electronic mail you can, in a couple of seconds, send a message to someone anywhere in the world, and it costs you virtually nothing. And people can send you a message equally quickly. The wonderful world of the Internet makes this possible today, since messages are usually delivered in a few seconds.

However, the ease of sending and receiving mail has brought along its own problems. And almost all of them arise out of improper usage. I refer to them as the Seven Deadly Sins, and am documenting them here as a warning.

Sin #1: Flames

World War I was triggered by the assassination of Duke Ferdinand, World War II by Hitler's annexation of Germany's neighbours. World War III will probably triggered by an inappropriate e-mail message.

Picture this:

You are upset with someone. You put together a quick, nasty message, get online and send it off to the victim of your ire.

Seconds later you realise that you shouldn't have done that, because the note will probably destroy your relationship with that person. But it is too late - in those few seconds, the message has been delivered and can no longer be stopped. The message is already in the addressee's mailbox, and there is nothing you can do to prevent him from reading it, getting upset and terminating his relationship with you.

A nasty message like this is called a flame - a message in which you violently disagree with someone, and might even stoop so low as to abuse him.

The way to avoid this is simple - allow a message written in an angry state of mind cool for an hour or two before you send it. Before you actually send it, read it once more, and make sure you still mean what you said in the message.

Sin #2: Excessive (or Pointless) Quoting

Most E-Mail programs (including VSNL's Pine program) have an option for quoting a received message in a reply you write. This is convenient when you are replying to some points or questions you have received.

However, many people just miss the point when it comes to quoting. Many just write their replies, and attach a fully quoted copy of the original message at the bottom of their reply. This unnecessarily adds to the message size, and serves virtually no useful purpose, and is called Pointless Quoting.

Quoting becomes useful when you intermingle the quoted text with your reply. Here is an example: 

> Will you attend the meeting?
Yes, I will, but I will probably come in a bit late.

> Where is the report on the Western Sector?
I had e-mailed it to PKR for his comments. He will probably 
pass it on to you later today.

> Have you played Quake yet?
Yes, and got motion-sick.Talk about virtual reality - those 
butterflies in my stomach were real! ;-)

As you can see in the example above, lines from the original message are quoted (with a leading ">" mark), while the answers follow each question/point.

Some people simply quote back the entire message, "breaking in" at appropriate points to add their replies. This is called Excessive Quoting. You should only quote as much as is required to jog the memory of the person who is reading it. This should never be more than two lines.

Sin #3: Delayed Replies

E-Mail makes sense only if you reply to the sender immediately. Many newcomers to the e-mail scene do not actually reply to a message for some time, having been spoiled by postal delays that have always been easy to blame.

In the world of e-mail, people expect a reply, and virtually instantaneously (or at least as soon as you have read the message). Non-receipt of a reply is taken as a sign of the message not having reached (an increasingly rare situation these days) or that you aren't interested in replying.

When you receive an e-mail message, reply immediately, even if it is just to day that you have received the message and will be replying in a day or two, after you have gathered the required information. Keep the flow and momentum going - if you "break the stride" of e-mail communication, you could be signalling that further communication with you is useless.

Sin #4: Account Sharing

Unless you are also in the habit of sharing your toothbrush with others, never ever share your e-mail account with others, nor use someone else's account for sending your messages.

E-Mail is something that is considered very personal. Should your correspondent feel that more than one person can read messages sent to your account, he will probably not ever send you a message offering you a job with twice the salary you are currently earning, nor will he ever tell you anything private or in secret (like a business tip that he doesn't want others to know that it originated from him).

Make sure you have your own e-mail account, with your name in the "From:" line. It is very easy to detect a shared account - it usually is in a company name, or the name of the signatory and the name in the "From:" line don't match.

Sin #5: Massive Attachments

This may have happened to you in the past - it has definitely happened to me. One morning, I send my PC out to retrieve my mail, and one hour later, it is still retrieving it. Often, my connection drops, causing me to lose mail. At other times, it is simply frustrating.

Someone has sent me a message with a megabyte sized attachment that I haven't asked for.

This is almost the worst possible offence you can commit with e-mail - sending a massive file attachment.

File transfers using e-mail are not uncommon, but there are limits of tolerance. Internet norms have it that no message should exceed 40KB in size. Some gateways on the Internet have real physical limitations when dealing with messages exceeding 64K (for architecture reasons). And most important of all, the person who receives the file may not be equipped to handle such a massive attachment.

Recently, a client of mine managed to hold up his entire e-mail batch for two days while several 500K messages were in the pipeline - the receiving gateway refused the entire batch meant for that site.

Don't get caught in such a situation when you are sending file attachments. First of all, make sure that the receiver is equipped to handle such large messages, and make sure that he can decode the message back into a binary file. E-Mail messages are exclusively 7-bit ASCII text, which means that the binary file enclosure will be converted into text using the uuencode or MIME process. Ensure that the receiver has such decoding capabilities.

Many good e-mail packages (such as Eudora) have an option that will automatically break a large message into several parts. Use this option. The different parts will be received by the recipient, and he can then put the parts together and decode the whole file.

Sin #6: Unsolicited Joke-a-Day

Also known as the DA (Daily Atrocity) problem, this is a syndrome that bites many "newbies" (newcomers on the net). Essentially, what they do is every now and then (usually once or twice a day), they send some funny message they have received (or found on the net) to a bunch of people - usually without checking with them first.

What these people do not realise is that they aren't the only once doing the hapless recipient this "favour" - in the past, I have had the same joke sent to me by several people - on the same day!

Even worse, these people, in their complete ignorance, usually mail these messages with the e-mail addresses of all the recipients in the "To:" or "CC:" field, which means that everyone who receives these messages now has a ready-made mailing list which he in turn can use to unleash his Daily Atrocity!

Two points - first of all, never send such unsolicited mail to people without checking with them first. And secondly, never put the list of e-mail addresses in the "To:" or "CC:" fields where they can be seen by everyone - put them in the "BCC:" (Blind Carbon Copy) field instead, which effectively suppresses the display of the e-mail addresses being targeted.

Sin #7: Junk Mail

Probably the worst possible thing you can do is overdo it. In recent times, many inconsiderate and ruthless users of e-mail have begun mass-mailing people on VSNL, offering their wares or services.

VSNL itself has been pretty docile about it, and has even been contributing to the cause by regularly sending system bulletins to all users - complete with all addresses in the "To:" field. This, of course, gives an unscrupulous vendor all he needs to do his mass mailing.

Recently, such an incident took place at Bangalore, which caused many users (and me) to take VSNL to task for not doing something about it. VSNL has finally agreed to take harsher action - probably to the extent of suspending the offending user's account for a couple of months.

However, this may not be sufficient. The real action has to come from you. You should immediately reply back to the offender, thanking him for pointing out the product/service that will hence be blacklisted by you. Additionally, you should immediately put up a note on your company's bulletin board, and circulate a memo, asking all departments to take note of the blacklisting of the vendor's product or service.

Winding down

These then are the seven deadly sins of Electronic Mail. Make sure you note them down carefully - by avoiding them, you will become a more productive e-mailer, and a cherished and trusted correspondent.