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Five email tics I'd love for you to lose

Merlin Mann | Nov 7 2005

For the love of God, people; can we get the word out on these? Format courtesy of my other site.

  1. The liberal use of the "VERY HIGH PRIORITY!!!" flag
  2. The 18-line sig about all the Bad Things that will happen to me if I ever reveal the contents of your privileged, confidential (and unencrypted) message
  3. The unrequested press release (and the serial ignoring of the "Unsubscribe" I sent you for the previous seven press releases)
  4. The graphical background, font and table tags, and remaining 14k of HTML cruft associated with every. single. message. you've ever sent
  5. The including of my -- plus 98 other strangers' -- personal email addresses in the "To:" line of your friendly reminder about Tyler's birthday party

Friend: I love you, but you must evolve.

95 Comments
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TOPICS: Classics, Email, Personal Productivity, Work
BrentN's picture

Merlin, I am with you 100%,...

Submitted by BrentN (not verified) on November 7, 2005 - 10:10am.

Merlin,

I am with you 100%, but you and many of the commenters here should at least be somewhat sympathetic to the poor sods like me who have no control over what our IS departments add to our mail after we hit send. I kept wondering why EVERY PERSON I sent mail to at my new job wrote me back with an annoying lawyerese thing. Then I realized it was being added to my message without my knowledge. :( I try to avoid using my work email account.

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