5 Incredibly Obnoxious Email Habits
It's hard to imagine a world without email. It's pretty much our main way of communicating these days. You don't call a business to file a complaint anymore, you email them. You don't stop by your friend's house to show her photos of your kids (that's crazy!), you email her. And if you work in an office, odds are there are days where you send and receive up to 100 emails a day.
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But some emails are better than others. Some emails you open and you chuckle to yourself, because they're funny and well thought-out. Other emails, not so much. Other emails make you want to hit delete delete delete, because they're so annoying!
Here are 5 incredibly obnoxious email habits we've surely all been on the receiving end of ... and on the sending end, too. Don't lie.
"Sent from my ... ": We get it. You have an iPhone. Or a BlackBerry. Congratulations. But by not taking off the "Sent from my" setting, you're basically just advertising the fact that the person you're emailing isn't worth five minutes at your computer. They're kind of an afterthought. A person you communicate with while you're in line at the grocery store. Also, you probably shouldn't keep on the "Sent from my" setting when you're sending a work email (which, yes, I've done!). You're supposed to be working, remember?
"Best"; "Regards"; "Cheers"; "Warmly": No, no, no, and no thanks. This isn't the 1950s (obviously, we're emailing). If you need to add a complimentary close to your email (which, sometimes you definitely should), why not go with "Sincerely"? It's the least, I don't know, fake-sounding of the bunch. And if you're emailing a friend, you can probably skip the closing altogether.
Forwards: An obvious one, yes, but one worth mentioning. Even if it's the cutest photo of a kitten in a marshmallow pit you've ever seen, the mere sight of the word "forward" is a red flag. And definitely don't be the one who sends the "something really bad is going to happen to you if you don't forward this to 100 people" person.
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Asking for money: That's so cool that you're following your dreams and finally making that documentary on the people who twirl signs outside of electronics superstores. But guess what? You're not going to get funding out of me by including me in a mass email. Take me out for coffee at least. (If you're asking for money for a genuine good cause, you're exempt.)
Telling people to "vote for your kid": This is more of a Facebook thing, I think, but still ought to be included, because I know people send emails like this out. Apparently, there's some sort of Gerber cute baby search going on right now, because I've gotta tell you, my newsfeed is full of people asking or, more aptly, telling me to vote for their baby so they can win some awesome prize. Everybody thinks their baby is cute. And pretty much all babies are. There's something, I don't know, kind of icky about sending out a mass email, instructing people to vote for your child in a cute contest.
What email pet-peeves do you have?
Image via Micah Sittig/Flickr
Written by Nicole Fabian-Weber on CafeMom's blog, The Stir.
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