NET MANNERS =========== I tried to gather here some main principles of the netiket (net etiquette) for beginner e-mail user. We must realize, that the rules for electronic messaging are different from what we have learned for phone or face to face communications. Netiket is actually a group of rules known to be good for electric messaging. Headers and subjects The header of your message should tell the recipient what is in the message. An excellent example is "Request: New TCP/IP address". With this the recipient doesn't even have to read the message. Bad headers, for example, "Problem" or "Hello hello" are unfortunately very common. Also, try to avoid obvious expressions as "Today is Tuesday", the date, time and sender name are already in the message. When you reply do not change the subject, this will enable the recipient to spot your reply from all the other messages. However, sometimes it is smart to change the subject since the dixscussion is out of thread, in this case people often change the "RE:Old subjecct" to "New subject (Was:Old subject)" Header is a synonym for subject. Reply copying When you reply to a message, copy the parts that you are answering to from the original message to your own mail. In internet this is called 'quoting'. Quoting right gives you and the recipient two benefits: 1) The recipient doesn't have to jump around the mailbox to get an idea of what is the message all about and 2) your mailbox doesn't grow uncontrollably, all you need is the latest copy of the message with the "summary" on it. The messages are normally written so, that the oldest message is always on top. In order to ease reading you can add a separator line or mark between the quoted and new messages. You are what you write Be careful with your messages. The recipient will form an opinion of you from what you write. Define your subject and questions with care. Never send anything half done. Check your message layout so that it is readable. Keep your paragraphs and lines short. The 'internet snadard' maximum lenght for a text line is 74 charachters. This includes the quoted message and marks. Your grammar is also important. Use upper case letters and special characters carefully, the whole message written with upper case tells more about you than the actual matter. Using only UPPER CASE LETTERS IS SHOUTING and it will offend most users. Remember, that recipient might want to comment and quote your message. It is easier for everybody if you kept your paragraphs and lines short. Distribution lists If you want to send your message to more than one person, it is polite to mention it at the beginning of the message. You might want to ad a list of recipients right after the greetings. Many recipients are often marked with "(cc)" next to the beginning greeting. Smileys :-) You can cheer up your "mail mate" with smileys. Smileys are short character strings which form pictures when you turn your head (usually left). The most common smileys are: :-) Basic smile ;-) Smile with a wink of an eye :) Low smile (chopped smile) :-ö Serious :-( Sad ö-( Angry It is polite to laugh or at least smile when you see a smiley. Attachments If you want to send attachments with your message it is polite to inform the receiver about the file format. Not all of us know what .PRS, .DAT or .WXD -files are... Remember to mention also the program version. Please remember, that the absolute maximum size for one message is 2 Mb. Even ? Mb (? Mb = 500 kb, one 3,5" floppy disk is 1,44 Mb) might cause some difficulties. The size of the message is the message and all attachments together. Also, the internet standard for handling attachments (called MIME) in the internet mail messages (called SMTP) is relatively new, due to different software version levels along the way it might sometimes be hard or even impossible to get the attachments delivered or delivered as supposed. National charachters and other special charachters The internet mail transfer protocol (called SMTP) was originally developed in USA and like in everything else (ASCII) our friends behind the pond did not include any national chartacters. Since then every manufacturer has introduced different standards to handle 8-bit ASCII over the internet mail. Only the latest version of MIME will give the internet community a standard way to handle the national charachters and attachments. Unfortunately this standard is not much of a help if your or the recipients system does not support it. ;-) As a rule it is polite to replace the national charachters with basic letters, e.g. the 'a-with-two-dots' with 'a'. Using a signature and cookie file You can see the advanced internet users using the signature file. In internet language we know this as 'sig'. A polite sig has the senders name and contact information and it does not exeed four lines. The width of the sig is limited by the width of the standard internet line width, 74 charachters. Advanced user never writes message lines wich are wider than the sig-file, such a mistake will seriously affect your credibility as an experienced internaut. Some users are also using cookie-files with the sig, a cookie is usually a humouristic one line comment expressing something about something... Does not really make any sence but should make you smile. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Santtu Ahonen WB#StuBit Icebreakers DoD#2041 MMAF MC BajaHill stu@nospam.compart.fi http://www.compart.fi/stu/ HD 1200 Panhead Opinions presented here are not necessarily the opinions of my employer