Email Etiquette Guidelines

In General...

• Remember to check your email regularly; official University correspondence is sent to your ANU email address.
• When using email for official correspondence try to keep the email brief and to the point.
• Format your emails in plain text rather than HTML because not all email clients read HTML.
• Specify the topic of the email in the “subject” field so that your recipient will know what the email is about. Very few people appreciate mystery emails.
• Please do not send or forward chain email. Many people find it annoying, and it is a wasteful use of network resources.

Regarding Attachments…

• Title the attachment in such a way that the recipient can identify it easily once it has been downloaded.
• In the body of your email, tell your recipient the title of the attachment, what type of software was used to create the document, and the year/version of the software. For example: "The attached file is titled ‘libraryopenhours.doc’ and it is in MSWord 2000."
• Make sure that you do not send very large attachments unless you are sure that your recipient's Internet connection and email client can handle them. As a basic guide, a 56K dialup can handle up to 1Mb.
• Do not send unnecessary attachments. If you have presented all of the relevant information in an email message, it is unnecessary to attach a document repeating the same information.