The Rules of Netiquette

1. Do not give out personal information to strangers over the internet or through email. Strangers are anyone you don’t know personally!

2. Do not open or respond to emails that are from unfamiliar senders.

3. Make sure you read and proofread your emails before you send them out. This will help with any unnoticed mistakes.

4. Get a response back to the sender in a reasonable and responsible period of time.

5. Only use smiley faces and other emoticons when emailing friends or family, not teachers or colleagues.

6. Always remember that using all capital letters comes across as yelling. “GET BACK TO ME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE” reads a lot more urgent than “Get back to me as soon as possible.”

7. Make sure the subject line of the email tell the reader what your email is about in a short, concise sentence.

8. Before you send your email, check and double check the list of recipients is accurate. You don’t want to send the birthday girl a reminder email about her surprise party!

9. Use the spell check function on your computer to check for any spelling or grammatical errors.

10. Avoid using long, run on sentences in your email. Some email programs don’t wrap text and will force the reader to scroll endlessly to the right to reach the end of your email.