Common Etiquette to Follow During Instant Messaging or Chatting

Now-a-days corporate world uses instant messaging system for internal communication among associates. It is a real great means of exchanging the words between different associates who are physically situated at two different places. In the age of outsourcing this chat communication is playing a vital role in distant communication. Due to this outsourcing whole team of a project is spread across the geography and the team members are instantly connected to each other with the help of this instant message (IM) application. With its popularity it also demands little basic etiquette to follow. It completely makes yourself visible to others by the way you interact with others.

Start with Greetings - Whenever you start the conversation over instant message, start with applicable address. Say 'Hi' or 'Hello' as applicable and then say the name, for example, "Hi, George". It is a good manner to start your conversation with proper greetings, i.e. 'Good Morning', 'Good Afternoon', 'Good Evening' etc. This is a good example of starting the conversation - "Hi, George. Good Morning".

Put Your Asking on the First Shot - I saw that there are several people who start their IM conversation with 'Hi' or 'Hello' and want to see if other person replies anything. Most probably they want to see the availability of the person at the other end and they will throw the next question only if they get the response from that person. This is a bad an etiquette. Whenever you are stating a conversation you should put forward your question on the first shot itself along with the appropriate greeting message. If you wan to see the availability of the person you are going to chat, you can very well understand that from the status beside the person. Status symbols are there to make to know about the state of the person. This is also true that we sometimes forget to maintain the status of our own state. But you should be careful on your etiquette. When I receive an IM with just 'Hi' or 'Hello' it is confusing to me to answer. I feel others also will find difficulty to answer if you don't ask the question.

Show Your Proper Status - This all instant messaging software has built-in feature of displaying user's status. It can say whether other person is away from computer, or if he is busy with work or if he is available and active to chat with others. This is a good manner to reflect your correct status properly. If you have lot of work and don't want someone to disturb you, there is no harm putting yourself in 'Don't Disturb' mode. If you are going for a meeting, change your status to 'In Meeting'. Once you come back from meeting and available for chat, don't forget to change your status back to 'Available'. You can also change your away message the way you want. Suppose you are going for a tea and will not be returning in next 30 minutes. You can change your away message as 'Went for a tea break, will come back at 4:15 PM'.

Respond Promptly - When you receive any chat correspondence from your friends or colleagues you should be show importance to them. Try to respond as promptly as possible. Don't let your IM sing blink forever. If you are in between something you can always say "Will be right back with you, give me a mint". If you need time to answer someone you should say "Looking into your concern, give me a mint please".

Check the Spelling - We often do spelling mistake when we chat with someone. Try to pay attention on such spelling mistake. Now-a-days almost all instant messaging software came with in-build spell-check tool. If your instant messaging software doesn't support spell check, download the spell check software available in Internet in free. You can use WordWed for this purpose.

Response Clearly- Try to make your response short but clear to understand. Descriptive sentences are not always good for this type of communication. Try to be very polite on your response. Answering to the point is always beneficial for both parties. If someone says that he sent one file to you, you should not say 'Yes' in response to that message. Here, the response 'yes' is not very meaningful and polite. It is better to acknowledge that information by saying 'Ok, thanks'.

Put Within Asterisk to Emphasis - Not all the instant message software enable with rich text editor. That means you won't be able to make your words bold or italic etc. In that case, you can use asterisk (*) at the beginning and end of the word. For example, you want to say 'Your salary got processed on 4/23/2007'; in order to emphasis on the date when your salary got processed you can say this sentence as 'Your salary got processed on **4/23/2007**'.