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Netiquette

Writing and quoting e-mails and news posts, a guide.

A printable and easier to read version for those with poor vision can be found here.

There are many resources on the Internet that allow people from all over the world to talk with each other on various different topics, whether it is a hobby or other interest, to help someone in need or to just chat about anything with other like minded individuals. These resources include mailing lists, Usenet newsgroups or "forums" on a web site. You may never use any of these resources to exchange your views with others, but if you do, there are some basic rules that you really should follow to make the experience better for yourself, and to encourage other people to take notice of what you have to say.

One thing that people don't seem to think about, is that when you are projecting yourself via an e-mail, a news posting or a forum on a web site, the people that will see your message cannot physically see you. They cannot see your facial expressions; they cannot read your body language; they cannot see how you are dressed; they cannot hear your voice. This means that they cannot make the normal assumptions as to what kind of person you are, as they otherwise would talking to you face to face, or even on the telephone. As a result, the only way people will be able to judge you is by how you write, and what you write.

Sadly, there are those that do not realise that they aren't projecting themselves very well, don't take pride in their "appearance" online or just don't care through laziness.

When it comes to the Internet, we all have to start somewhere. We all make mistakes and have to learn how things are done. If you are new to the online community, then mistakes are to be expected and can be forgiven.

It's bad enough when new users jump in with both feet without looking (not reading up on how things should be done, for example). So, when more "experienced" users ignore the very basic "Internet Etiquette" – also known as "Netiquette" - through ignorance or laziness, arguments and other problems will occur.

Lack of Netiquette (or just plain old consideration for others) and being just too damn lazy to at least attempt to write properly, is one of the main causes of arguments (also called "flame wars") in the various online forums. It also leads to people getting tired of trying to decipher your e-mails.

This generally means that people will ignore you by "skipping over" or deleting your messages straight away, or even adding a filter to delete your messages so they're never even seen. People are (in general) inherently lazy, so the easier it is for them to read what you have written, the more likely it will be read and replied to.

There are times when someone will try and point out errors, either because they are genuinely trying to help, or because they're just frustrated. Sadly, both cases usually end up with offence being taken and an argument ensues.

Of course, if all you ever do is to e-mail a couple of friends, this isn't quite so bad, but if you wish to venture out into the wide Internet world of mailing lists and newsgroups, you'd be wise to make at least a little effort.

Before reading on, I would like to point out that no one is expecting miracles from you, like getting your spelling and/or grammar 100% correct 100% of the time, we all make mistakes. All that is being asked is that you make an effort.

So, how do you become a productive and worthwhile member of the Internet, not annoy the hell out of others and/or not waste resources? Read on…

Consider other's feelings

When you're sat at your computer, staring at a monitor, its all too easy to forget that on the other side of all those messages you see, are real people – just like people you'd meet out on the street. With this in mind, its a good thing to remember that they can be just as easily upset by something you say in a message on the Internet, as they are when standing right in front of you.

People can become a lot "braver" when dealing with another person online than they would in person, as whole continents separate most posters, and are as a result, generally out of "punching distance". You wouldn't call someone you hardly know a "blithering idiot" (or something much worse) to their face, so don't do it when online.

Unlike a room where a discussion or debate is occurring, a mailing list or newsgroup can have a very large volume of subscribers. At least two mailing lists I am on currently have over 1500 members, which would normally mean a very crowded room. To the best of my knowledge, there is no way to accurately tell how many people subscribe to any one newsgroup, but it is believed that some run into many thousands. Bear this in mind when posting, if your message is inflammatory, it can affect a lot of people.

Think twice, post once

Like the old saying "measure twice, cut once", thinking twice about posting a message can save upset later. For instance, if it is in response to someone else's bad posting – walk away from your message, do something else and come back to it later – often your feelings/mood will improve and you will either delete, or rewrite it.

Have patience

No reply to your message yet? Have patience.

Most mailing lists exist because someone has an interest in some subject, hobby or whatever. The list's members are subscribed to it for the same reasons, and even sometimes because they are knowledgeable in the subject and want to help other people. So, please remember that these mailing lists, newsgroups and web-based forums are not there as your personal support service; they are not run as a service; the people there are not paid to be there. They are under no obligation to even read your message, let alone reply to it (unless it is a support list, and the lists charter says this is its purpose).

So, you may not have had a reply because other people on the list may not have the answer, it may be a holiday and people are away from their computers, people may be busy. Did you write your message concisely and clearly? Be patient, it can sometimes take a day or two for people to reply. If you haven't had a reply after a reasonable amount of time, then post a follow-up and politely ask why. Ranting at them for not jumping up and answering you straight away will get you nowhere and will more than likely lose you a future source of help.

Spelling

This is perhaps one of the most overlooked areas of e-mails. Now, you're generally not expected to have the spelling prowess of an Oxford University lecturer, but most e-mail packages like Outlook and The Bat now come with "as you type" spell checkers as standard – so there really is no excuse for extremely bad spelling. Dictionaries are not expensive, and their online counterparts are free to use (you may actually learn something).

You should improve with practice, if not, why not? Are you just lazy? Or don't you just care how you appear to others? Remember; your e-mail messages and how they are written are how others form their opinions of you.

L33t 5pe4k, TLAs and IRC speak

What is often termed as "leet speak", is where letters are transposed for numbers that have a similar look, e.g., "4" resembles "A"; "3" resembles "E", etc. L33 5p34k was a fad and only "newbies" trying to be cool and fit in use it, or just spotty teenagers with no friends, stuck in their bedroom.

Often used is the shortening of words to one, or a few, letters, some examples are:

"You" becomes "u"
"You're" becomes "ur"
"For" becomes "4"

This probably developed from days gone by when spending any amount of time online cost a fortune in telephone bills and was mainly used on IRC and in MUDs. It still prevails somewhat on IRC, but it is dying out as phone charges become less and with the advent of broadband Internet.

TLAs, or Three Letter Acronyms again are shortcuts and mainly used on IRC. Examples of TLAs are:

LOL = Laugh Out Loud – usually a response to someone saying something funny that makes you laugh in real life.
TBH = To Be Honest
BTW = By The Way

Again, this was used as a way to say more in less time.

As e-mails are generally composed without the need to be connected to the Internet at the time (and can be sent later), you can take as long as you wish. So the use of the above "short cuts" are extremely lazy and can make e-mails very difficult to read and to decipher by those who don't know what the hell they are. As a result, you get ignored (or even shouted at).

Oh yes, you're not "txt mssgng ur m8 via ur mble phne, ethr". It ain't big, it ain't clever and it looks crap, so don't use it unless you really are text messaging your mate via your mobile phone…

Writing IN ALL CAPS

THIS IS CAPITAL LETTERS (or upper case), this is lower case. Writing in capital letters is considered to be SHOUTING. It is also harder to read as words written in all caps forms a rectangular box around its perimeter; it has no other shape. Whereas words written properly with lower case letters and the odd capital where necessary, form various, recognisable shapes. It is sometimes possible to work out what a word is by the shape of its perimeter without actually being able to see the letters itself.

There really is no excuse for it, other than being too lazy to press the "Caps lock" key. If you really don't know when to capitalise words and "over compensate", there are plenty of web sites with guides that can be found via search engines such as Google.

Quoting above reply

This can possibly be blamed on Microsoft, at least partially anyway as their supplied e-mail software defaults (or at least used to) to reply on top.

When having a conversation in e-mail, the answer, or reply to a remark or question (as in real life), should come after, not before. The following is an example of why top posting is "bad" (sorry, I don't know who to attribute for it):

A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on Usenet and in e-mail?

So, for a conversation that flows easily, type below the text you are replying to (this is also known as interleaving). Remember; in the English speaking world (and most other languages for that matter) you read down and not up.

Leaving in whole reams of text for a couple of words.

This really is annoying, lazy and a waste of resources. If you and others continually leave in all of the text from the messages you reply to, more and more extraneous text builds up with each reply. Top posting usually worsens this as the bottom of the message is rarely seen when you reply, so the reams of unneeded text goes unnoticed. So, an e-mail that would otherwise only be about 4k in size, can eventually turn into a monster of 30k - or even larger.

Also consider this e-mail as it gets sent across the Internet. The larger it is, the more bandwidth it uses, the more money it costs. One e-mail of say, 8 kilobytes (or 8k) in size may not seem much, but it all adds up pretty quickly, especially if you could have cut out unneeded text that would have reduced its size to 3k – less than half the size.

I run my own web server and am acutely aware of bandwidth and its costs – it may not cost you anything, but your laziness and lack of consideration pushes up my bandwidth usage and running costs. Say the average, well formatted e-mail is 4k in size, my server currently delivers at least 7000 e-mails per week, that totals up to at least 28.7Mb of e-mail data per week. It really does not take much to push that figure up.

That's just for my server over one week, just imagine how many millions are sent across the Internet in that time and how much extra resources your laziness consumes.

HTML e-mail

Yes, it looks nice, but HTML formatted e-mails pushes up message sizes to at least 10k in size with its extra formatting and images, when a good old plain text message may only be 3k to 4k in size.

The following image shows a selection of e-mail sizes from a genuine mailing list. The selected message (highlighted in blue) and the one beneath are HTML e-mails - you can see here that these examples are on average, twice the size of standard text e-mails.

See above for explanation on resources used, the same applies here.

Use a "delimiter"

A signature "delimiter" or "cut mark" is used in just about every e-mail and newsreader software package ever written since the start of time. It signals where in your message that the message text ends, and your "disposable" signature text starts.

This will allow automatic removal of all text below that point by the software package you use when someone replies to that message, saving someone the hassle of (or just remembering to) doing it himself or herself.

The delimiter (or cut mark) consists of a blank line, two (2) dashes, a space and a new line (as if you had pressed "Return" after the space):

I sent myself a quick test e-mail to create an image, so you can get an idea of what a delimiter would look like in a message. In the following image, you only see the two dashes, but if I were to reply to that message, everything below that point would automatically be removed.

Frequently Asked Questions

It happens to the best of lists, new people join it and ask that question that has been asked and answered so many times, that the regulars there tend to beat their heads on the desk in sheer frustration. These are referred to as "Frequently Asked Questions", or "FAQs".

Okay, so we know that you are not the Encyclopaedia Britannica, you are not expected to know everything and will at times, have questions that have answers that are rather obvious to most. So, what do you do? You look for the FAQ, the document that one or more list members have painstakingly written to save sore heads and dented desks. This document is sometimes posted to new members when they join a list, to the list itself on a regular basis, or is on a web site dedicated to the list.

You really should take the time to read this document anyway as it often contains important information of varying degrees that is relevant to the list – as every mailing list has different rules and ways of doing things, it makes life easier for all if you know what's what.

Does it need to be asked?

You've found and read the FAQ looking for that elusive piece of information, but to no avail. Before you go any further, you can still help yourself – mainly by visiting a search engine such as Google. Many times I have found an answer to a problem by visiting Google, which has returned links to web sites with more information than I need on the very first page.

It also has the advantage of often being much quicker than firing off a message a mailing list and waiting for an answer…

Resources

Dictionary.com: http://www.dictionary.com Online Dictionary with links to a Thesaurus and writing guides.
Google: http://www.google.com Perhaps the best Internet search engine.
Merriam-Webster Online: http://www.m-w.com/thesaurus.htm Online Thesaurus and Dictionary.
Windweaver's Search Guide: http://www.windweaver.com/searchguide.htm A guide on using several of the many search engines and Internet Directories (hasn't been updated for a while, so doesn't include some engines like Google).

Glossary

Directory: Similar to a search engine, but the web sites in its database are added and categorised by humans, and not by automated software.
IRC: Internet Relay Chat. Real-time text based chat with one or many other people around the world.
MUD or MUDs: Multi User Dungeon(s).
Search Engines: A search engine such as Google is a web site that a person can use to search for other web sites containing information on a subject they are interested in. Search Engines find web sites to index and categorise in two ways, 1) through a "robot" or "spider", or 2) through a web site's owner adding it manually. Robots and spiders are basically software programs that trawl through web pages, reading them and indexing the relevant information into the search engine's database that your query is matched against. They also follow links in those web pages to other pages on the same web site, and external links to other web sites.

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