Cybersecurity for Executives: A Practical Guide

APPENDIX B: GENERAL RULES FOR EMAIL ETIQUETTE

Avoid the Caps Lock key

Typing using all capital letters in any sort of online correspondence usually is seen as the virtual equivalent of SHOUTING. For emphasis, bold type or italics always are preferable, because a caps-locked section of text is seen as both visually ugly and rude.

Keep your language clean

Even if your company culture is one in which the use of the occasional expletive for emphasis is acceptable, avoid any profanity or obscenity in emails coming from your business account. You never know who is going to forward your email outside of the intended circle of recipients. For example, Arkane Studios Creative Director Raphael Colantonio learned this lesson the hard way, disparagingly referring to journalists as in a profanity-laced email sent to the entire company after a leak regarding a new project.¹ Unfortunately for him, the email was immediately forwarded to those journalists, and the entire Internet was able to indulge its penchant for schadenfreude. As far as emails from your home account goes, keep your language clean there too. We believe that profanity is unprofessional and there are much better ways of expressing oneself than to use coarse and crude language.

Always double check your address fields

There are few virtual faux pas as embarrassing as forwarding an email with disparaging and snarky commentary, then realizing in horror that you accidentally hit “reply to all,” allowing the entire company to laugh ...