Netiquette = Internet etiquette, network etiquette, or net etiquette. But before we delve into the discussion of netiquette, let’s define the word etiquette. Etiquette, as defined by The American Heritage Dictionary is “The practices and forms prescribed by social convention or by authority.” In her book, Netiquette, Virgina Shea states that the word etiquette “… comes from the French word for ‘ticket.’ If you know the etiquette for a particular group or society, you have a ticket for entry into it.” It doesn’t take a huge extrapolation to see that Netiquette is the practices and forms prescribed, or accepted, by the internet community for socially acceptable behavior. Each community builds a standard for governing communication; the internet is no exception. When you become yourself@wherever.com you have entered a different world, with its unique rules of communication you’d do well not to ignore.

The development of Netiquette

Netiquette has developed through its common usage across cyberspace – or if you’d rather, the world wide web. As organizations, companies, special interest groups, etc. began creating guides for correct conduct, specifically for their employees and membership, the ‘unofficial’ enforcement of netiquette began to spread. In an electronic interface where words become text and are physically separated from the ’speaker,’ netiquette provides a way to assign, control, and sometimes, even censor, online communications.

However, just as with face to face communication, what is considered conventional in one online arena is not necessarily appropriate in another. Wikipedia states “The rules of netiquette are slightly different for newsgroups, web forums and IRC. For example, on Usenet it is conventional to write in standard English and not use abbreviations such as “u” for “you” or “ne1″ for “anyone”. These abbreviations are only slightly more likely to be tolerated on web forums, but are almost universal on IRC where, since discussion is real-time, they serve the practical purpose of speeding the flow of conversation.”

This article does not intend to try and define the Netiquette needed for all electronic forums, as that would be a tediously boring and long article that would outdate itself before it ever began; what it will do is offer up some very common rules associated with Netiquette to get you off to a strong start. When it is all said and done, if you want more, the search engines are dying for you to do a more targeted search.

10 Common Rules of Netiquette

Use Your Brain. Think again. As condescending as this may sound, I honestly can’t put any other common rule of netiquette above this one. The internet is not a trash compactor for your brain dump. With the way internet users disassociate from their words, it seems I need to drive home the point that the internet is one big archive. Your comments are public; P-U-B-L-I-C, public. You may ‘think’ you know who is reading, but when you are posting to a website, a blog, a message forum, a chat session, an email list of committee members, or even a members only e-group or private e-mail, it is STILL for public consumption.

If what you are sending off into cyberspace can’t be read by all, you may want to think again about sending it. If you think your directness may be read as rude, think again. If you are angry about a business transaction or personal interaction and just want to vent, I would encourage you STRONGLY to think again. Better yet, follow the 24-hour rule taught me by a wise friend; write your response, save it to draft, and then sit on it for 24 hours; you may think differently about sending it in the morning.

Refrain From Writing in All Capital Letters. Capital letters (also called Caps) should be used sparingly for EMPHASIS, in online legal documents, and for Titles or Subtitles, if needed. Outside of these uses, it is common netiquette in the online community that capital letters indicate someone is yelling or shouting online. SO DUMP THE CAPS ALREADY! *snicker*

Not only is the yell factor offensive, but it is also more difficult to read an email or a message sent in all capital letters and you may lose your audience prematurely; which isn’t the effect you’re likely looking to get, right?

A study at The University of Toronto on the Interface Design and Optimization of Reading of Continuous Text yielded that “Upper case print, italics, and right justification by inserting blanks result in slower reading” and that “Searching for words is faster with uppercase characters, but reading of continuous text is slower (Vartabedian, 1971), perhaps because interline masking is greater with uppercase (Nes, 1986). In addition, lowercase enhances reading efficiency because word shape is helpful in word recognition (Rudnicky & Kolers, 1984).”

IT IS EXHAUSTING READING AN EMAIL IN ALL CAPS. TURN OFF THE CAPS LOCK! IF NOT, AT SOME POINT THE INTERNET WILL COME AFTER YOU WITH FLAMES OF FIRE! Offensive, no?

Chunk It Up. Have you ever received an email or read an article that went on and on and on – one big, long, never-ending paragraph? In the same study from The University of Toronto mentioned above, evidence suggests that adding line-spacing can assist in reducing fatique in your readers.

“Evidence of Wilkins and Nimmo-Smith (1987) suggests that increasing spacing between lines and proportionately decreasing horizontal spacing between letters may improve the clarity and comfort of text without affecting the density of the text. Close inter-line spacing may impair reading because of vertical masking, and because return sweeps are more difficult (Kruk & Muter, 1984). Evidence of Lunn and Banks (1986) suggests that interline spacing should be variable to prevent fatigue resulting from adaptation to spatial frequency.”

When I receive client emails formatted in long paragraphs, I am forced to break them down with a hard carriage return (using the ‘Enter’ key) while I’m reading; in other words, it steals away my time. However, if I don’t do this, I find it necessary to stop and look away to rest my eyes a bit, but not before I highlight the word where I left off to prevent losing my place when I returned to the document.

If what you have to say is important, don’t be lazy, give your reader every opportunity to comfortably read the entire message – whether it be on a message board, email, post or document. If what you have to say is NOT important enough to give your reader that courtesy, don’t send it and spare them the hassle. And? If what you have to say can be said with less words, please do use less words; less truly can be more.

Mind your FAQs. In this world of fast food, fast internet, and fast results, we can easily forget to respect others’ time in an effort to save our own. If and when you have a question to ask of a site owner, first use the site’s search feature (when available) or refer to the FAQ section on the website. Frequently Asked Question sections are built from questions such as yours; the likelihood of your question being answered there is high. If your question is for an online web group or other organization, refer to the ‘About Us’ or ‘Mission Statement’ section for answers if there isn’t an FAQ.

Obviously there will be times when you can’t find the answer to your question and will need to find the appropriate contact person to ask, but before proceeding straight to the ‘contact’ page, don’t be selfish, make a reasonable effort to search out and review any information already provided on the site.

Subject Field = Short Description. If I had a nickel for every email I received where the subject field screamed HELP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I NEED HELP NOW!!!!!!!!!, or something similar, I’d have one to two Java Chip Frappuccinos paid for weekly. Remember the popular line, “Help me, help you.”? Consider that thought when sending out your next email sans a helpful subject line.

This extends beyond just the issue of technical support, however. Giving an appropriate, short, but descriptive, subject line gives the receiver of your email, support ticket, forum thread or newsletter post a good idea of what to expect inside.

We all prioritize our responses to online communications. For those of us that are part of an email newsgroup, we may select to not read all messages because they will not all be relevant to our interests or field of expertise (if it is a professional newsgroup or forum). Having a well constructed subject line frees readers to comfortably delete messages irrelevant to them; this common courtesy saves everyone time.

In a situation where you need hasty technical support, a succinct subject will get your ticket forwarded to the most appropriate department or person more efficiently. Not only that, but it helps you and/or your support person to refer back to your ticket quickly if needed.

A good rule of thumb with building a solid subject line is to give the venue or subject matter, then a short statement referring to the issue. If I receive an email with the subject line, ‘Email: SMTP not relaying.‘ I know exactly what to expect from the email and may reply faster than if I receive an email with the subject line, ‘HELP MY EMAIL IS NOT WORKING!!! I’M SO FRUSTRATED!! AACCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!.‘ With the second email subject, I have to force myself not to respond emotionally to the yelling inferred by the capital letters and the multiple exclamation marks. Honestly, I might not respond as quickly if I only have a few minutes because I have no idea if the issue is something I can fix in 2 minutes or 20 minutes. In this way, a non-descript subject field sets both the sender and the receiver at a disadvantage.

Don’t Assume. The world wide web is a big place and most of us that interact with it regularly have several online acquaintances, usernames, businesses, web urls, and individuals to remember. When sending a personal or business email, posting to a forum, group mail, or technical support, you need to supply as much information as needed to assist readers in identifying you and assisting you, especially with regards to a support question or request. Obviously the following bulleted list will not be necessary with each interaction, but consider what venues where it would be appropriate for and don’t forget to make them available where appropriate.

• Name
• Name of Company
• Username
• Web URL
• Passwords (if needed, for technical support)
• Contact Email

I regularly receive mild to frantic messages for technical support that do not offer the name of the company, provide only the reply email – which is often a personal email, not at all related with the website URL we have on file, perhaps only a first name, and before I can provide any help at all, I have to waste time by following up with a “Who Are You” message.

Proper Netiquette means you don’t consider yourself the center of cyberspace. We all need to recognize our place as but one part of the whole. The internet isn’t Cheers – everyone doesn’t know your name here – it is a vast and boundless land where identifying yourself is absolutely pivotal in communication, professional relationships and support.

There ARE instances where it is best to relay as little information as possible – please know that I understand and support this fact. For the sake of this common rule of netiquette, however, I am discussing interactions where information, for example, is necessary to get the follow up support needed.

Stop With the Forwards Already. You may be a person that enjoys receiving forwards of poems, videos, chain mail, dancing babies, jokes, and the bane of all recipients – the email that does it all … at one time. You can rest assured, however, that not everyone is so appreciative of this mail clutter. In fact, I daresay MOST are not so enchanted.

A good many of us work online our entire work day; for those that do not work online, they are already battling spam and don’t need to battle the forwards pile-up.

It is a good practice to contact an individual BEFORE adding them to your ‘Forwards’ list; ask them if they would like to be added. My response would be an emphatic “No.” I would be polite, but clearly explain that I receive up to 300 emails a day and do not care to sift through any more emails than are absolutely necessary.

If you insist on continuing in your Forwarding Frenzy, please strip the forward down to its bare bones – send it ‘naked.’ By that, I mean:

1. Don’t send all the unnecessary information. We don’t care where the original message came from or that they had a Virus Watch on their email program and it was delivered safely to you at 20:08 on 2006-15-06.
2. Remove additional characters – extraneous leftovers from an email that has made its way through the email client software of several different hard drives.
3. Send the ACTUAL forward and not a forward of a forwarded forward so that the subject line is not FWD: FWD: FWD: FWD: Dancing Baby eats alligator off the coast of Africa! SEE IT LIVE!

Think of forwards for what they are – junk mail. What do you do when you receive Junk Mail? Right – you send it into the nearest trash receptacle. On a computer that is your Trash Bin. When in doubt – hit ‘delete’.

In the case where a close friend is subjecting you to their forwarding frenzy, here are a couple of suggestions for getting your name removed from their list.

Every time you receive a forward from a particular address, hit reply and paste one of these:

If you want to be nice: “Thank you for considering me, however I prefer to not receive forwarded email. Please remove me from your forwards list. Personal emails are always welcome. Thanks again, Your Name“

If you don’t: “I have forwarded your email address to every aggressive spamming company I know. Thank you for continuing to forward me emails as each email allows me to add you to yet another Viagra or Penis Enlargement mailing list. Sincerely, Your Name“

Of course, if you are practicing proper Netiquette, you will ignore my second suggestion *smile* and/or try to communicate with the friend again about your severe distaste for forwards and anticipate they will be respectful of your wishes.

Protect the Privacy of Others. Adding someone to your Forwards list is sooooo not recommended, but adding someone to your Forwards list and then sending their email out for all group members to view in the ‘To:’ line of the email message is an infringement on the privacy of everyone listed.

Judith Kallos of Net Manners writes in her article, Don’t Brush off Privacy:

“Do you show a blatant disregard for your contact’s privacy? How would you feel if your contacts whether business or personal, decided to take your phone number and give it out to strangers? Strangers who you don’t know! Strangers who may use your phone number to contact you about something you’re not interested in or worse yet, who may sell your phone number to telemarketing companies to do the same.

The same thing happens with e-mail addresses every single day.”

In her article, Ms. Kallos tells you how to use the BCC function in your email client to protect the privacy of your personal Group E-Mail lists.

Spelling and Grammar Tools Are Your Friend. Do you e-mail, post, or submit messages ‘on the fly’? If you do, stop and consider that the internet is a public forum. It would be wise to read, re-read and edit your posts for spelling and grammar; if not for now, consider how it could effect you in the future. Remember, the internet is one big ol’ archive.

Your current and future employers, clients and business acquaintances may find you online – will they see your correspondence as professional? Will poor spelling detract from the credibility of your articles, forum or e-group posts? As was written in our 3rd Common Rule of Netiquette, do you format your text in an organized manner, or is everything you say one long, string of hard-to-read text?

The effort put into your online writing, or e-composition, will reflect your attention to detail, the extent of your knowledge and abilities, as well as show how much respect you assign to your readers.

Bottom line, in this day and age spelling and grammar checkers abound. Don’t have one? Get one – and y’know, USE IT.

‘P’ is for Punctual. If you have given out your email address as a point of contact anywhere on the world wide web, you have issued a virtual invitation for someone to actually contact you via that email address. In doing so, your responsibility is to reply within a reasonable period of time.

I understand that what seems reasonable for one person is not necessarily reasonable for the next, so consider the Golden Rule. What amount of time would you give someone to respond to you? Is 24 hours too long? What about 48 hours?

My personal standard is to try and respond within 24 hours during business hours. My online communication is done between the hours of 9:00 to 5:00 (CST) Monday through Friday. If I’m online on the weekend I will respond to email, but I feel it is my responsibility – it is appropriate, professional and courteous – to respond within 24 business hours to emails, private messages and/or offline instant messages sent to me.

If you know it will take you a few days to gather the information needed to reply completely to an email, shoot the sender back an update to let them know you are waiting for information and you’ll respond once you can reply in full. Your potential or current client will know you aren’t ignoring them and will be thankful for the courteous professionalism.

Eyes Wide Open

We haven’t even really scraped the service of all the Netiquette guidelines on the internet, but I find that if I slow down, open my eyes, and focus on being respectful to others in my online communication, I will do fine most every time. With this approach, when I don’t do as well – I’m forgiven much more easily simply because my reputation and previous efforts are documented.