How-to Articles

• E-mail Etiquette - Part 2

• Numbering Pages for Different Sections of a Word Document

E-mail Etiquette - Part 2
By Sue Sledge

The last e-mail etiquette covered viruses, spam, and junk e-mail as well as forwarding procedures.   This article will cover addressing, online petitions and hoaxes.

Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do not use the TO: or CC: fields for inputting e-mail addresses unless you want the recipients to see each other’s name and e-mail addresses.  If you use the BCC: (blind carbon copy) field for listing the e-mail addresses, the individuals you send to will only see their own e-mail address.  If your BCC: option is not displayed, click on where it says TO: or click on the address book and your address list will appear.  Highlight the desired address(es) and choose BCC: and that's it. It's that easy.  When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say "Undisclosed Recipients” in the TO: field of the people who receive it.  Your sent file will display all the BCC: recipients but they will be unable to see who else was copied.    

Have you ever gotten an e-mail that is a petition?  It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The e-mail can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and e-mail addresses.  A FACT: The completed petition is actually worth money to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and e-mail addresses contained therein.  If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient.  Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and e-mail address on a petition.  

Some e-mails will say something like, ‘Send this e-mail to 10 people and you'll see something great run across your screen.’ Or sometimes they'll just tease you by saying 'something really cute will happen.'  It won’t..  

Before you forward an 'Amber Alert', or a 'Virus Alert', or some of the other unsolicited e-mail messages floating around, check them out before you forward them.  Most of them are junk mail that's been circling the net for YEARS!

Just about everything you receive in an e-mail that is in question can be checked out at Snopes.  Just go to www.snopes.com.  It's really easy to find out if it's real or not - simply type in a few keywords from the subject e-mail.  If it's not real, please don't pass it on.  Matter of fact, copy the Snopes link and send it back to the person that forwarded it to you so they will also stop circulating fictitious information.