Writing Effective Email

Part one of this weeks lesson was on domain names. I won't go into that part of the lesson in these notes.

Your message can show up completely different than you intended if your correspondent's software can't handle formatting. When sending a message to multiple addressees you should assume your intended audience won't be able to view HTML and stick with plain text. Quoted-printable is an email protocol that the architects of the internet invented to encode data so that 256 different characters can be represented. To be absolutely certain that your email can be read and will resemble what you wrote as much as possible, avoid sending HTML mail, avoid using special characters, and stick with pure text.

If you want to send a URL to someone in an email, always use http:// in your message. Be careful with the punctuation - especially periods- that follow right after a URL. The mail reader on the other end may think the period is part of the URL. It is a good idea to put the URL on a seperate line. Be careful with sending attachments. Large files should be posted on the web and the URL sent to your correspondent for viewing.

You should keep your email paragraphs shorter than you would for a written document. You should also try and keep your line length to 70 characters. It is a good idea to try and keep everything on one "page". This means the equivalent of a double-spaced, typewritten page -- or about 25 lines of text.

Points to remember:
Don't use formatted text.
Be aware of special characters.
Send web pages as text.
Type in http:// before your URLs.
Be cautious with attachments.

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