E-MAIL BEHAVIOUR If you want your attempted communication to be read, let alone understood, you should follow these guidelines. (Yes, they may sound harsh - but I am amazed what people assume, and I presume the objective of the e-mail effort is specific communication not throwing message bottles into the ocean current.) If you received this file in response to an email from you, with little further comment, it means that your message was not easily readable thus was not read - but I care a bit (enough to give you info rather than ignore you as if a spammer). You should keep four things in mind: - Internet email is a different context from using your desktop computer by yourself (it works differently). - It is also different from web browsing (it works differently and has more trip-up possibilities. - Feedback is not instant so miscommunication is easier). - Internet email is not a robust communication system. Many anomalies will occur, especially if you don't Keep It Simple. TABLE of CONTENTS: Junk Mail Attachments Chain Letters Embedded URLS HTML format KISS Line length Subject Who Are You? Connectivity PS (security notes moved to comsecur.txt) JUNK MAIL I define junk mail as un-requested mail that is one or more of misleading, not to-the-point, poorly- targetted, slippery, verbose, frequent/ voluminous. IE "junky". Such material is a waste of the sender's effort and money because I will not read it, will advise others to avoid the business, and will report apparent fraud to justice authorities. Spam, whether email or paper, will be reported to the security function of the carrier(s). (Honest, succinct, pertinent mail is readily accepted.) Here is advice on how to keep your genuine mailings from being regarded as junk mail: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020317.html ATTACHMENTS Tell the recipient the file name and format, so they can figure out how to view it. Beware that the original filename may get obscured by the Internet process of passing the file along. Avoid pasting into your message from a fancy word processor, especially Microsoft Word, as that tends to cause the message and attachment to get combined in ways that few people can read. Avoid HTML format. Text is readable, HTML may not be on the user's computer. Some Microsoft software is using a new MIME format called MS-TNEF which uses RTF. It has the term IPM.MICROSOFTMAIL.NOTE at the beginning. Get the sender to change formats - do not use RTF or MIME for the message. (MIME itself is OK for attachments.) Do not send attachments from within the application that made them, such as Word or scanner software. There is a known trap doing that in Word (they'll arrive as a wordmail.dat file), and scanner software is often poor quality. Create the file then send it as an attachment to a regular email message. As well, I've received Word documents that have an e-mail header embedded in them - please send a real document using the plain attachment function of your email. I am seeing a limitation of Windows' Kodak Imaging and scanner software - it cannot read JPEG files created by some scanner software, yet those files can be read in old graphics software. Also note that some software does not read multi-page TIFF files. Check your sending software for settings, especially if you have a Mac, Unix, old software, or AOL. MIME (base64) format is the most widely understood encoding, thus a good default choice - but you are coordinating the communication with the recipient, right? (Mac users may need BinHex, Unix users may need UUENCODE - especially if their software is old.) Not only are different software programs incompatible, some aren't compatible with their own siblings or other versions/vintages. That is a problem with Word 97 and Word 95, less so with the patch applied to Word 97 to make its SaveAs Word 6 default more usable - note Microsoft added a new format around then, whereas WordPerfect did so much earlier (circa WP version 6). You should be explicit to the recipient as to what you did (hey, some people don't even know they need certain application software to read a file). Do not send large attachments without prior agreement. Just because you have a cable modem does not mean the whole world does. (And in poor/remote areas Internet Gateways may limit attachment size.) For help reading attachments see my page ATTACH.TXT. CHAIN LETTERS You wouldn't be so naiive, would you? :-) EMBEDDED URLs Don't expect that the recipient's software can use them. Quote the full URL so they can copy it into their browser. (If it is very long they may need to copy it in pieces at their end when it wraps onto more than one line, as browsers tend to stop at the line break. Try to find a shorter URL for the web page.) Also note they are a security risk, so may add to the score your email gets in spam filters. HTML FORMAT Do not use it. (Many recipients will get it as an anonymous attachment - and anonymous attachments should not be opened, for security reasons, even if the recipient can figure out how to open them.) (I've seen cases of some type of HTML-like page breaking into individual attachments - 41 of them in one case. A _salesman_ kept sending such email, despite my requests to stop and my statement that I could not read his message, then had the nerve to ask me to update my software. Duh? (He no longer represents that client.) HTML has now become a security risk - opening an HTML document in a browser could infect a computer. (Chris Halsall's column, Business Examiner of Nov. 19 - Dec 3, 2001, page 14). KISS Keep It Simple EMail is not a toy, not a hammer. (The "two-year old and hammer" analogy is popular.) If you want to communicate, do so properly - otherwise many people won't listen. LINE LENGTH Check your e-mail settings. I suggest limiting to 70 characters as some software needs 72 (normal line length is 80). If your email software does not impose a limit some recipients will see only part of each long sentence and may not know how to see the rest - even if they do, its hard to read for comprehension. (Of course our grammar teachers may have told us not to use long sentences, but 80 characters is short anyway? :-) Some recent versions of Microsoft e-mail software appear to not actually use the length setting they display. That may be caused by a format setting of "quoted printable", rather than "no encode" which will insert a carriage return at the defined line length. If you have problems, check that and also try setting line length to something a bit different. As well, I see versions of Outlook Express whose Help function advises where to find the setting - but it's not there! (Some web-mail and web-forum software does not properly handle paragraph breaks, so older email software does not show the line space between paragraphs. A Mac with Netscape using Compuserve's AOL-originated web entry forms, sending to users of old Compuserve software, is one known problem combination - Compuserve 2000 and Prodigy email are suspect. Use of HTML format may contribute. Recipients may try CTRL-T to view the entire message on screen, print it, or copy it to a program like Windows Notepad in order to read it. But don't use that as an excuse to avoid setting your sending software correctly. Sometimes lines will be split with an equals sign, often as =20. I doubt it is practical to completely eliminate that, but keeping line length reasonable will help. (It occurs with the "quoted printable" version of MIME, often when a linefeed is seen as a character outside the 7-bit ASCII range thus is encoded in a special way.) SUBJECT It helps to give clues to the sender and topic in your subject line, especially if your email address is not your name or if you use legacy services like AOL or Compuserve. (Messages from their members often lose the name of the sender in the transmission - it shows as UNKNOWN, which may be rejected if another anomaly occurs.) Note that many people delete mail without reading it, if they do not recognize who the sender is. They do that because virus and spam are common and their authors are getting even sneakier. For important messages see the receipt discussion below in CONNECTIVITY. WHO ARE YOU? Besides the above, please put your name at the end of the message. Some Internet paths lose your name in the address field, substituting . CONNECTIVITY How do you know your message actually got into the intended recipient's in-box? You may or may not be notified if it was lost along the way or dumped into a system administrator's "look at someday" pile of anomalies because you addressed it incorrectly or the person moved. Some indication may be available from the return receipt function available in some software and networks, but the only sure way to know if the recipient received your message and read it is a meaningful response from the intended recipient. And another little glitch - AOL 6 mail software's address book does not accomodate addresses with 31 characters as are common on their subsidiary Compuserve's Classic former mail system. Apparently the sender can type the address manually to send a specific email. PS: This is not intended to be a comprehensive list of problems and tips - I include detailed examples only as such. My advice is: - be conservative - know your software - keep your virus shields up - keep in mind your communication is over long distances without easy ability to quickly say "huh?". :-) "If a website degrades the user experience too much, people will simply stay away. - Jakob Nielsen, usability expert. ......common sense should tell you the same principle applies to email: people won't read it. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright Kurmudgeon Keith Sketchley 2011.10.03 Use of advice and information contained in this file is at your risk. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- BACK in your browser should return you to the page you came here from.