I open all my email. Except SPAM. And BACN. I suppose I could imagine letting an email languish, unopened, in my Inbox, at least for a while.

But for the White House to refuse to open an email? From the EPA? That’s a major cyber-snub. Read the New York Times’ article on the story here.

Want a sure-fire way make the front page of the New York Times? Just send a business email from home with sensitive information that might later end up in a federal investigation.

That’s exactly what’s happening to two former Bear Stearns executives whose story made the front page on Friday.

Mr. Cioffi and Mr. Tannin’s primary mistake (well, aside from their hedge fund investment strategies) was forgetting that emails sent from home were just as easily traceable as emails sent from within the office. Now, as a result, they face nine counts of securities, mail and wire fraud. As Mark Mershon of the FBI noted, this case is about “premeditated lies to investors and lenders.”

Mr. Cioffi and Mr. Tannin can take a little hope from previous cases involving email exchanges, most notably that of Frank Quattrone of Credit Suisse, against whom charges were dropped. But in one sense, it’s already too late for these former Bear Stearns execs: their story has already made the front page.

You’d think they would have learned by now, but no! Emails are still getting government officials in trouble. The latest case has to do with an email sent by Veteran Affairs clinic coordinator, Norma J. Perez, which has touched off a fury with the revelation that there is a widespread effort to avoid paying veterans benefits for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Perez’ email from March 20 urged psychologists to, “refrain from giving a diagnosis of PTSD straight-out,” given that there are more and more compensation-seeking veterans. For more on the story, follow this link.

Needless to say, Perez instantly tried to apologize. Her excuse? That the email was “poorly worded.” That’s the written equivalent of the phrase, “I mis-spoke myself.” Perhaps we need a new phrase for government officials to use when they want to disavow something they sent electronically. I’m thinking: “I mis-wrote myself.”

One of the worst email etiquette offenses is sending the too-large attachment. Here is a cautionary tale from a well-meaning man in India, who, after emailing photos to friends from a trip to the Maldives, received vitriolic emails in turn, denouncing, “All we can see is the top of your head, what sort of pictures are these?” among other comments. I know from first-hand experience how infuriating this situation can be; large attachments, such as photos, clog work email, which can be an enormous problem if I’m checking email from my handheld; it gets clogged, and I can’t do anything about it until I’m back in the office and can delete the space-hogging files.

The problem is easily avoidable if you take a moment to be thoughtful towards your recipients. Luckily the same news story includes a step-by-step guide to make your photos a manageable size. Do your recipients a favor and take the time to do so before you SEND!

A lot of the stories posted to our Bad Emails Forum concern angry emails, sarcastic emails, or mean emails. As one poster recently pointed out, though, sometimes the most obnoxious email is simply that one that’s unnecessary. Read: An Elder Office Stateman’s story here. No; the email described in this tale didn’t cause any damage or trouble, but provides a perfect illustration of a time when the sender should have hit Delete and not Send.

Twitter, for those of you who don’t know, is a way of sending quick snippets of information, and it’s quickly catching on among those who want to know how their friends and family are doing without necessarily wanting to read a long email. Twitter’s website has a great instructional video on this new way to find out “what are you doing?”

But what does this mean for email? Lately I’ve seen a lot of chatter (twittering?) on the internet among several angry bloggers, who are denouncing the end of an era and saying that email is outdated.

I don’t think we should be so quick to write email’s obituary though! It’s holding strong as the number one means of business communication, and, while Twitter has its time and place, there are still plenty of circumstances I can think of in which I’d prefer to send (or receive) an email. The point is that communication forms are dynamic and intertwined, and it’s up to people to decide which form to use for which circumstance. Instead of being competitors, I see Twitter and email as compliments to one another.

Here are 5 times I might use Twitter instead of sending an email:
- to pass on a url
- to tell you what I’m currently doing
- to let people know my opinion on current events
- to confirm time and place of a meeting
- so you know that I’m running late to that meeting!

It may be that Twitter poses a bigger threat to the blog, simply by nature of its quick, concise 140 character limit. Twitter can’t possibly hope to do all that a long email does, but it very easily could sum up many blog posts. After all, once I’ve read the first paragraph of many blog entries, haven’t I generally figured out all I need to know?

So if I want to tell my friend how I’m really doing, I’ll send off an email. But if I only need to tell him I’m making pizza for dinner tonight, Twitter is a great alternative.

Stephen Dubner ran a great blog entry on the Freakonomics blog in which he analyzed a misunderstanding he’d had on email. In a follow-up post, he mentioned this site — and the fact that we are compiling a collection, of sorts, of email errors and mishaps. As a result of his post, we now have some excellent new tales in our collection — including one about Shirley Temple Black, which is posted under the heading, “Discriminatory Treatment of Emails.”

The real point of the story has little to do with STB and far more to do with the dangers of goofing around.

I like to change my subject lines. A lot. I tend to change the subject each time I answer, even many rounds into a back and forth exchange with the same person. For example, let’s say I get an email with a subject line that says: MOVIE FRIDAY NIGHT? I might reply MOVIE FRIDAY NIGHT! (Note exclamation point replacing question mark — that’s if I want to go to the movies). Then let’s say the person writes back with a subject line: RE: MOVIE FRIDAY NIGHT! If the body of the text is asking me if I want to see “Juno” or “Dan in Real Life,” then I would have a subject line that says: DAN IN REAL LIFE! The body of the text would include my reasons why. Future subject lines in this exchange might include: DAN IN REAL LIFE CHELSEA CINEMA? or DAN IN REAL LIFE 8PM SHOW!

You get the point.

This works well for me — when I later search, I can easily find the exact email I want. (I use Mac mail.) It works well when I use Outlook, too. But it doesn’t work so well with Gmail thanks to their “Conversations” way of presenting threads, which really requires identical subject lines to create its groupings. This was pointed out to me today by a Gmailer who found my constant swerves in subject line bizarre.

I haven’t yet decided what to do with this piece of information. Maybe I’ll change subject lines less when I am writing to a Gmail address. Or maybe I’ll just keep doing things exactly the way I’ve been doing them.

So I know I’m repeating myself — but I want to expand on the subject of cross streets. Maybe it’s because I live in New York; and maybe it’s because I’m cranky; but it really amazes me how few people and businesses think of this. With residences I can sort of understand — with businesses it mystifies me. Why wouldn’t you want potential customers to know exactly where you are? Why make them work? If you own a business and you tell people you are located at 302 West 12th, well, then, you deserve to have NO customers unless you also let them know that 302 has, oddly, its entrance on 8th Avenue, and that it’s between 12th and Bank. If your business is at 625 Madison, would it kill you to let customers know, in your email signature and on your letterhead and in all your ads, that it’s between 58th and 59th. What’s the worst that could happen? Sure, it’s not as Zen and elegant. But it’s just plain helpful.

Smart businesses instruct their employees to use signature blocks that have all the necessary contact information — including cross streets for the address, and links to maps, with directions if there’s any possibility for confusion.
Here is an example of a business, Fresh Partners, that really does it right.

How hard is this really? Tell people how to find you, exactly how, and you will earn their thanks and their visits and their dollars.

Okay, so this is my plea to all my friends, to everyone I do business with, and to everyone who wants to do business with me: Please put your address (including cross street) and phone number (direct line, please, or cell) in your email signature. It makes life way easier.

For years I didn’t do this. And I don’t know why.