It bears repeating over and over. Use spell check. Use spell check. Use spell check and then check it again yourself. Nothing is more annoying or makes you look more “stupider” than misspelled words, bad grammar, using the wrong word, or just plain laziness. “There’s” is not “theirs” and some words can completely change the meaning of the sentence. Those red and green squiggly lines are not just for decoration.

Posted by: jac on August 7, 2008 at 6:20 PM

I am a horrible typist and although I don’t mean to send emails with typos, I generally find the error(s) after I sned the message. why is that? I have gotten to the point where I simply apologize in advance for typos, misspellings and grammer mistakes. I suck at proofreading my stuff. I have found a stratey that works. I write the email and save it as a draft. Then I reread and correct the errors. Sometimes it works.

Posted by: angie on August 13, 2008 at 1:20 PM

Another bad email habit is deleting an email without reading it.
I always attach an “open/read alert” to my messages so I can see when you delete the message without reading it. The bad part is that they always call asking questions that were addressed in the email. It drives me nuts:)

Posted by: Angela on August 15, 2008 at 3:50 PM

The most annoying habit that I found is re-sending same message in a very short period of time. For example I get a message from someone at 8:45am in the morning (I get to work by 9:30am, so at 8:45am I am in transit), then same message at 10am. Yeah, I just got here, you know it, now give me some time to find your message, will you?

To add injury to the insult, these messages usually have a number of attachments and clog the mailbox.

Angela,
I never allow return receipts, especially to recipients I don’t know. Even worse, if I don’t know you and you attach “open/read alert” most likely that alone will have me delete your message without reading. The rationale behind it is that this is the cheapest trick for any educated spammer to see if your e-mail is alive.

Posted by: Vlad on August 19, 2008 at 4:39 PM

As an HR consultant I have seen many email habits that are not only annoying, but career altering. A couple of examples…

A sales rep hits reply all instead of just reply when making a mean-spirited comment about the sender (his boss)

A receptionist sends a not-so-rated-G joke email to the companies contact list instead of her personal list.

An HR Manager deletes a message that he later needs in court…because he did not read it.

The answer is to train, train, train.

Posted by: People Wise on August 28, 2008 at 5:44 PM