3 Ways to Boost Your Gmail Netiquette

By Thomas Samph on February 19, 2012

There’s nothing worse than that feeling in the pit of your stomach when you realize you’ve just sent an email to the wrong person.

You could be facing an Anthony Weiner-esque plummet from grace, or just some minor ego scarring. But that depends on who was on the receiving end of your message and what was in your email.

Hopefully you’ve learned from politicians’ mistakes and not sent any scantily clad self-portraits to an audience of…the entire Internet. But it can still feel like that, no matter what was in your message.

Photo from Flickr.com uploaded by kplanz

So how do you prevent a mistake like this? Netiquette.

Netiquette is the fine art of online etiquette. It’s how you conduct yourself in every sphere of online interaction, from chat rooms to emails.

For the latter, here are three tools that could save your life, give your emails a professional, unique look, and possibly save you some minor embarrassment.

Tool #1: Creative Design For a Professional Email Signature. A signature box at the end of you email is a reflection of your personal brand. Make it your own. You can structure your signature in a couple of ways:

Text based email signature

  • Text: Separate your signature from the end of your text with a line or several spaces. Always include your full name first. Below, add your title and contact information. You can include links to your personal website, phone number, email and LinkedIn account. This way, the people you email can always get in touch with you and get to know more about you if need be. Avoid including too much information; if you’re not comfortable adding all of your contact information like your phone number, check out Google Voice for an alternative way to manage phone calls.

Image based email signature

  • Images: Using images in your email signature is a great way to show off a creative and professional online presence. To the right is a screenshot of my personal website that displays my name: clicking on the image in my email signature goes to my personal website. Below that, the small image icons are links to my blog, Twitter, email, Google+, Picasa, and Storify accounts. At the very bottom is text that links to email, website and phone number. Create image links in an email signature by uploading images to your signature box, then linking them to any site.

Tool #2: The un-send button: In the settings menu of Gmail, make sure you enable the Undo Send option. This way, if you catch your mistake within a short period of sending your email, you can correct it. It’s not failsafe, but at least it’s an option. You can also enable Gmail Goggles in Gmail settings: this setting will prompt you with a math problem to solve before sending an email. Helpful for the late nights and weekends when you might not be in the best shape to be emailing people. You can adjust the schedule for when Gmail Goggles turns on.

Tool #3: Boomerang for Gmail: Boomerang is a reminder system for email. When sending large amounts of email (or even small amounts), it’s easy to lose track of what you’re sending. Set Boomerang to email you when you want to be reminded to follow up on an email you sent. You can even tell Boomerang to send an email at a later time. If you’re up late working on an assignment, don’t send it at 3:00 am; tell Boomerang to send it off at 8:00 am instead. Snooze for Gmail is a similar tool. It allows you to set reminders for emails you’ve sent; a small popup window can remind you to follow up on an email in a half our, later that day or a couple days down the road.

These tips are are couple ways you can make emails more professional, more efficient, and save yourself from sending off anything embarrassing. Always practice proper netiquette.

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