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Email and Forum Etiquette
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Kathie M. Thomas
Kathie’s title is “the Virtual Assistant Queen,” VA Coach & Trainer, Public Speaker and Author of six VA/career oriented books. Founder of Australia’s first VA Network in 1996, she registered her own business “A Clayton’s Secretary” in 1994. She has since become a role model for women who want to work from home and be there for family. She is a Proverbs 31 Woman. She was named a “Top 100 Australian Blogger” and was nominated for the Australian of the Year Award in 2008.
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There seems to be an increasing trend of replying to a personal email or forum based email and not include the message being responded to. I find this rather annoying to say the least, not to mention time wasting.
Email is still not 100% proof as we all know and if I’m interested in seeing what someone is responding to, but they haven’t included a portion of the originating email, it means time is wasted trying to find the original email or be forever in the dark if the original email wasn’t received. And I hate being in the dark!
Yesterday I was trying to follow the thread of a conversation on a forum but had to keep going back to previous emails to try and figure who was responding to who and about what. Very disjointed.
And today I received an email from someone I don’t know thanking me for my offer of help regarding their website. And yet they did not identify themselves and did not have the original email included. I did a search of my sent files for their email address and they aren’t listed there – at least not over this past month. So what were they replying to and what did I say to them in the first place? And how long ago? I’ve had to ask them.
If you’re new to email or new to participating in email based forums, it makes good sense to include the part of the original email you are responding to, to keep a trail of the conversation that has been begun. And if you’re emailing someone direct from a forum, copy and paste the bit you are responding to so it keeps them in the picture. Makes for much smoother lines of communication.
