With the widespread use of electronic mail, the human race has more opportunities than ever to put our collective feet in our mouths. This brief guide to E-mail describes computer manners and protocol. Maybe it will help to spare you some embarrassment one day.

Inspiration for this document and for the tables below came from the book, The Windows Internet Tour Guide (Ventanna Press). The rest of the information was obtained from Internet research.

Messages should be concise and to the point. Think of an E-mail message as a typed version of a telephone conversation. Nobody's ever won a Pulitzer Prize for a phone call -- nor will they for an E-mail message.

Remember that some people receive hundreds of E-mail messages a day (yes, there are such people), so the last thing they want to see is a message from someone who thinks he or she is the next Dickens.

You'll see lots of E-mail messages in which the author has put a dozen exclamation points (called "bangs" in computer circles) at the end of a sentence for added emphasis. Big deal. If something is important, it should be reflected in your verbiage, not your puctuation.

Not everyone has E-mail software with word wrap (the feature that keeps you from having to hit the Enter key at the end of the line). A large number of users still have terminals and teletype devices that do not gracefully handle text longer than the old punch card's length of 80 characters.

Keep your use of abbreviations to those in common use, such as FYI. Writers who try to save too many keystrokes often trade clarity for confusion. Some of the more common abbreviations, which should probably be avoided, are listed below:

BCNU be seeing you

BTW by the way

FWIW for what it's worth

FYI for your information

IMHO in my humble opinion

OBO or best offer

ROTFL rolling on the floor laughing

RTFM read the funny manual

TNSTAAFL there's no such thing as a free lunch

TTFN ta ta for now

TTYL talk to you later

Since E-mail has no visual or auditory cues, users have come up with "smilies": simple strings of characters interspersed in the text to convey the writer's emotions. The most common example is :-) (turn your head to the left to see a happy face). Use smilies with discretion. There are hundreds of them and their translations are by no means universal; a misinterpreted smilie could lead to a "flame" (an angry, ill-considered response-hastily sent and often regretted). Here are some more examples:

:-) Smiley face

;-) Wink (light sarcasm)

:-| Indifference

:-> Devilish grin (heavy sarcasm)

8-) Eye-glasses

:-D Shock or surprise

:-/ Perplexed

:-( Frown (anger or displeasure)

:-P Wry smile

;-} Leer

:-Q Smoker

:-e Disappointment

:-@ Scream

:-O Yell

:-* Drunk

:-{} Wears lipstick