1. Remember the human, you are communicating with real people, people who have feelings just like you, and you need to respect their rights just as you would in any other area of your life.
2. Respect an author’s privacy. Don’t forward private/confidential messages without permission from the writer.
3. Be respectful of others’ time. Use subject headings and consider placing action items in the beginning of your e-mail.
4. Help keep flames under control. Think about the tone of your e-mail because tone is very difficult to control in print. If you read something that really makes you angry, resist the temptation to fire off an emotional response. Take a deep breath, go for a walk, and put the message away until tomorrow.
5. If you don’t get a reply in a reasonable amount of time, follow up with a phone call; recipient’s e-mail could be down with problems, or your e-mail got caught in a spam filter, etc.
6. Be forgiving of other people’s mistakes on e-mail.
Prepared by the Communications Committee—March 2006
