Email Anti-Patterns Summaries
Whatever you send by email, unencrypted, is available for anyone to read.
How do you catch the attention of the busy professional with an overflowing inbox?
A polite clarification question (what did you mean?) always at the end of the business day (the next email will need to wait until tomorrow).
Send your seasons greetings on a real card next time!
You send an email politely asking for something and the reply politely informs you to go send your request to someone else.
Any trouble? just send an email and. someone. will. help.
Could you please book the meeting room for tomorrow?
When you send a very specific question and they immediately respond with a generic FAQ answer like they didn’t even bother to read your email.
Please kindly submit your application to this email address.
Exploit email to exchange at any time whatever information is not explicitly foreseen by the process you are supposed to follow.
How to make it difficult for everyone that receives your email to answer you directly by replying to the email?
When you send 1 email to 2 (or N) people, nobody feels in charge and you get 0 answers.
An empty email with an attachment containing the actual message.
Email used for asking a person to read or write data into files, databases, or information systems.
People misspelling my name when replying to an email my name is in, irks my soul.
Lightning replies reach your inbox while your email client is still working on sending out the original message.
Acknowledgements carrying zero information. Did they actually read my mail?
Unnecessary informal request for validation. Do they really think I wouldn’t understand this?
The email you put off responding to since you want to give it your full attention - and thus never answer, giving the sender the impression you don’t care, when in fact it’s the most important thing in your inbox.
Broadcasting reminders via email addressed to an entire organization five minutes before the event can be a symptom of desperation.
When someone forwards me an email I was already carbon-copied on.
When sending out email requests to do something with a long due date, do not confuse acknowledgements (which tend to arrive quickly) with the actual task results (which normally arrive around the time you expect them, but could show up earlier than you think).
Replying to all recipients with the intention of privately replying to the original sender only. Never happens.
If you ask n questions in an email, at most n-1 will be answered.
For more information visit my homepage! (Nothing happens when you click on homepage)
Can someone please send me the latest version?
Please post this somewhere on our website.
Dear all, effective immediately…
Dear all, as you may have noticed today you are receiving some SPAM messages.