Netiquette: the rules we wrote for ourselves

Hello friend,

Long before anyone had a style guide for email, the people using it wrote their own. Some of those rules were gentle, some were furious and a surprising number are still right. This week is a tour of what the early inbox thought good manners looked like.

The rules that survived

Keep it short, say who you are and quote only the bit you are replying to. Do not shout in capitals. Read twice before you press send, because you cannot take it back. There is a formal version of all this in RFC 1855, and a friendlier summary on the netiquette page.

New in the inbox

A chain letter promising seven years of luck if you forward it to fourteen people.
A reply-all that reached four hundred colleagues and one very confused intern.
A signature with a cat made out of keyboard characters.

Browse the archive

Reply to this email and it comes straight to me.

Imran

Netiquette: the rules we wrote for ourselves

What do YOU think?

Also from The Old Inbox

You may also like

Top-ranked in Technology

The rules that survived

New in the inbox