A couple of weeks ago I wrote a post suggesting that e-mailers should be careful to edit the subject line when replying to e-mails. I got such enthusiastic response to the e-mail (I guess my readers share my pet peeve) that I thought I would share another e-mail tip.
So my tip is this–make the “To:” field the last thing you fill in when you write an e-mail. Why? Well, have you ever gotten half way through writing an e-mail, been interrupted, then accidentally hit “Send”? Or maybe you were writing a sensitive e-mail that you wanted to get just right, or an important e-mail that you wanted to proofread with great care, but you accidentally hit “Send” before your e-mail was ready to go.
My wife often uses e-mail therapy. She will write a blistering e-mail to someone who has wronged her. She never sends them, but she feels better having written them. Imagine her regret if she accidentally hit send!
In any of these cases, if you had not filled in the “Send” field, your not-ready e-mail would not have been sent. I do all of my e-mailing using Apple’s “Mail” program. In mail, the send button is grayed out, and you can’t hit it if there is no address in the “Send” field. I tried a few other e-mail clients, and they either work the same way as Mail, or they display an error message if you hit send.
If you have any more words of e-mail wisdom, why not leave a comment and share your thought with the group? Or write an article and send it to me to post on the blog.