The Five Biggest E-mail Blunders

Over the past ten years, e-mail has become the primary means of business communication. It's convenient, easy and inexpensive, making it an attractive option for busy employees trying to maximize efficiency. The casual nature e-mail, however, has many people abandoning professionalism and etiquette for the sake of speed. While e-mail is definitely a more casual form of communication than traditional letters, the words contained in an e-mail message should be treated with the same care as those on paper. To follow are some common blunders that people make everyday when using e-mail in a professional setting. While they may not ruin your professional career, these blunders certainly reflect poorly on your professionalism.

5. Forwarding messages without an explanation
When you forward an e-mail message, be sure to include an explanation of what the forwarded message contains and why you are forwarding it. Although it may sometimes be self-explanatory, adding a quick personal message gives your e-mail a respectful tone and helps the recipient quickly understand what he/she is about to read in the forwarded message.

It's also important to note that any message you create can be forwarded, so choose your words carefully.

4. Forgetting that e-mail messages are the property of one's employer, or even public information
Your employer is giving you the technology to send and receive e-mail messages for business purposes. Most companies allow employees limited personal use of their e-mail accounts, with the caveat that their e-mail can be audited at any time. When sending personal e-mails, or even e-mails to your co-workers of a personal nature, steer clear of any topic that you wouldn't want your boss to see.

When discussing controversial work issues, it's also important to keep in mind that what you say about these issues in your e-mail can come back to haunt you. A good example of this was when officials of the City of Fairfax, Va. were exchanging e-mails about how they wanted to move a homeless shelter out of their jurisdiction because the facility was creating problems. Publicly, the City's position was that it wanted to re-locate the shelter to find a bigger facility. Under the Public Information Act, members of the community near the proposed new location audited these e-mails and exposed the City officials' true intentions.

3. Using the "body" field to submit text for formal written assignments
When you are submitting an assignment to your boss, such as research that you have conducted or a marketing piece, send the assignment as an e-mail attachment. When your boss receives your work in the form of an e-mail body, he/she cannot review it and make changes as easily if it were in a document. Additionally, submitting your hard work as e-mail text makes your work look unpolished. Send the assignment as an attachment, and use the "body" field to indicate what the attachment contains, and any additional information that your boss should know.

2. Excessively using the "reply to all" button
It's surprising how many people "reply to all" when their message is really just intended for one person. Many times, this seems to be the result of carelessness, and the replier doesn't actually mean to reply to everyone on the original distribution list. Mistakingly hitting "reply to all" when your message is private in nature can be quite embarrassing and unprofessional.

Other times, the person believes that their message is relevant for the entire distribution list, when it's really not. For example, when an employee sends a message to the entire company, and someone replies back to the entire company with a message that only the original sender would care about, then that person has filled everyone's inbox with another piece of irrelevant mail--something that busy professionals don't have time for.

When you use the "reply to all" button make sure that your message is relevant to every person the distribution list. To avoid hitting this key by accident, just slow down a bit and double check your "to" field.

1. Leaving the e-mail body blank
Although e-mail is sometimes used as a means to exchange files and not messages, it's still inappropriate to leave the "body" field blank. If you are sending the e-mail with the primary purpose of sending an attached file, then simply use the body field to describe what is contained in the attachment. Simply using the subject line for this purpose might be a quick and easy way to send attachments, but your e-mail comes across as incomplete. Furthermore, you probably have additional information about the attachment that you would like the sender to have. For example, if you are sending a sales proposal to your boss for review, you might want to explain how and why you included the numbers that you did.

Do not confuse the subject line for the body of the e-mail. The subject line should be short, but descriptive, and the message should be contained in the e-mail body.

Once again, most of these blunders probably won't get you fired, and some recipients might not think twice about it. However, your level of professionalism is reflected in your e-mails, so you might as well take a few extra moments to ensure that you're sending the right message in the right way.