1999 vs. 2009 Then And Now – Netiquette

In a few short months it’s going to be 2009, and a ton of stuff has changed in the world of computing over the past almost-ten years. Some of the modern advancements have proven to be a notable improvement while others still produce the same crapola they did nearly ten years ago.

In this installment we’ll be taking a look at something called netiquette. This is the word etiquette with an n on the front to symbolize internet etiquette.

Netiquette is a word that’s been around a very long time. It is known to those that understand how to be polite and courteous, and that excludes the vast majority of the internet populous worldwide.

Let’s take a look at how netiquette has and hasn’t changed.

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Etiquette is easy enough to understand; the word is literally defined as “Rules governing socially acceptable behavior”. However as far as your online behavior is concerned there are “rules” so-to-speak that only apply to the internet.

These rules I speak of aren’t technically rules. Netiquette is not like written law where you must obey it else you will be penalized. Rather it’s a set of online social guidelines. These guidelines change periodically as online technology changes.

The best way to exemplify netiquette is from what’s happened with text communication (particularly e-mail) over the years.

E-Mail Then and Now

Space (in reference to digital storage) was minimal in 1999. In addition, most people connected via means of dial-up. What this means is that e-mail took a significant amount of time to download, and once downloaded had to be something that didn’t waste the minimal space on the mail server or your computer.

HTML Formatting

HTML-formatted mail was a no-no in 1999. This is mail that has stylized text (bold, italic, underline, colors, sizes, etc.). This turned an e-mail 5k in size to 35k or more – just for text without any file attachments. If you sent an HTML-formatted e-mail you were sure to get a “nastygram” reply back screaming at you not to do that because it wastes space.

In modern times being that space is plentiful both on the mail server and our personal computers, sending e-mail that uses stylized text is no longer a concern.

The modern netiquette rules of e-mail concerning formatting are:

• Don’t make your fonts huge. This is annoying.
• Don’t use fonts that are cursive looking. They are more difficult to read and more often than not the person you’re sending the mail to doesn’t have the font you used.
• Don’t use light-colored text. For example, text in pale yellow or bright pink is bad.
• Do not use custom templates. Some mail clients offer the use of custom background images and the like. All of them are bad because there’s a good chance some people you send e-mail to have web-based mail or a mail client that “doesn’t understand” it, ending up in an e-mail that literally looks like a mess afterwards.

Sending to multiple recipients

Netiquette dictates that when sending mail to multiple recipients to not openly display the e-mail address of every person on your list on send. This rule is the same as it was in 1999 and hasn’t changed whatsoever.

People to this day still make this mistake of showing everybody’s e-mail addresses in a “To:” or “cc:” list on send of an e-mail to multiple recipients.

Some would ask, “What’s the problem with using To: or cc:?”

The answer is that most people don’t want their e-mail addresses displaying to people they don’t know personally. If you’re sending an e-mail to a list of people, odds are not everyone on the list knows each other, and some of the recipients will get angry at you for just “flying out” their e-mail address like that.

Imagine for a moment that your phone number along with all your friend’s phone numbers was given to a friend’s friend that you don’t know. That would obviously make you quite upset. People feel the same way when you do it with e-mail.

If sending a mail to multiple recipients, use blind carbon copy, better known as “bcc:”. In the “To:” field, enter in your e-mail address and put everyone else’s address in the “bcc:” field. By doing this, everybody’s e-mail address is kept private (which makes them happy) and you still accomplish what you wanted to do originally with the mail-out.

Replying “to all” from a mail sent to multiple recipients

Someone sends you an e-mail that was sent to multiple recipients in addition to yourself. You want to reply and have two options. You can either reply direct to the author or reply to all. When you reply to all, everybody on the recipient list will get the reply.

When you “reply to all”, this is a sure-fire way to get many angry replies sent directly to you screaming to never ever do that again. This is because nobody is interested in a conversation they’re not even a part of to begin with.

This is another rule of netiquette that hasn’t changed over the years. If you’re going to reply to multi-recipient e-mail, reply to the author only and not the whole list.

In addition – it is just as bad to do a “reply to all” purposely to tell the author how stupid he or she is for revealing everybody’s e-mail address to everyone else. You’re not fixing the problem by being a jerk like that.

Unnecessarily long/intricate e-mail signatures

There are some who have e-mail signatures that are completely out of control. These crazy signatures I speak of are filled with useless information, annoying “funny quotes” and at their worst – images.

The worst offenders of long/intricate signatures are office people, as in the people who work in the office and feel the need to insert every single scrap of information possible – with a picture of him or her of course.

You know you’ve got a problem with an e-mail signature if your too-big signature dwarfs the body of your e-mail.

An example reply with a too-big signature:

~ ~ ~

Sure, I’ll meet up with you at noon.

John Doe
Senior Sales Executive
XYZ Company
johndoe@xyzcompany.com
Ex: 321
Building: 2
Hours: 8am-5pm
Manager: Jack Pschitt

> Hey John, do you want to meet up for lunch today?
>
> Jane Doe
> Senior Sales Executive
> XYZ Company
> janedoe@xyzcompany.com
> Ex: 123

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Note how the body of the e-mail is completely drowned out by the signature. This is an absolute waste of space.

The rule of e-mail signatures is: Text only, 5 lines maximum, no formatting, and plain text only.

The emoticon

The emoticon is what you know as side “sideways smiley face”. On September 19 1982, Scott E Fahlman posted a message to the Carnegie Mellon University computer science general board, which stated:

19-Sep-82 11:44 Scott E Fahlman

From: Scott E Fahlman <Fahlman at Cmu-20c>

I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:

Read it sideways. Actually, it is probably more economical to mark

things that are NOT jokes – given current trends. For this, use

The emoticon, as it’s called, has been used ever since. To note: There are uses of the emoticon in other forms that predates Scott’s usage, however the one Scott wrote is the one known the most.

Use of the emoticon is at times required in order to prevent something that could be read incorrectly.

For example:

You’re an idiot.

and…

You’re an idiot.

…are not the same. The emoticon at the end gives the impression that the statement is a playful jest rather than an outright insult.

It is 100% OK to use an emoticon as long as you don’t overuse them or use ones that nobody will understand.

For example, is understood as a “big grin”, bit XD, while meaning roughly the same thing, simply looks like the letters X and D and nothing more.

The “safe” emoticons to use are:

• The smile as or
• The frown as or
• The wink as or

…and that’s it. Use any others and you run the risk of your “emotion” not being understood correctly at all.

Internationally, speaking those three emoticons are universally understood. All others are not.

Netspeak

I will conclude this article by describing what’s known as “netspeak”, i.e. internet slang.

Netspeak has many names that all mean the same thing, such as:

• Internet language
• Chatspeak
• Leetspeak
• Chat Room Shorthand
• 1337 (leet from badly-shortened and misspelled elite “spelled” as numbers)

Netspeak is the word most people recognize, meaning simply “Internet Speak”.

You should never use netspeak. Ever. Anyone who uses it is instantly pegged as a child with a poor education and the attention span of a bump on a stump. There is nothing “cool” about using this “language”. I’ll speak more on that in a moment.

Netspeak was originally devised as a way to converse freely and openly on public internet systems without fear of being “spidered” by a search engine.

For example, if you spelled computer as c0mput3r, very few people would ever be searching for the “netspoken” spelling of the word.

It is true that in the early days people would illegally trade paid computer software serial numbers written in this fashion to avoid getting caught. An example of this is:

Fin4l Cut Pr0 S3ria1 Numb3r: [serial number here].

In later years, children discovered this method of communicating and thought it was “cool”, so they started using it themselves.

This is where everything started to go downhill.

Whereas netspeak once had a purpose (even though a dark one), now it was adopted by children as a means of “being cool” on the internet.

This is why any and all use of netspeak today makes you look like a complete flaming idiot if you use it. Children – many of who cannot spell regular English words correctly – will actually study and use netspeak instead. What you’ve got is a bevy of mindless children that can’t pass an English class to save their lives but know everything about a “language” that in real life is 100% useless.

You should never use netspeak anywhere. Not in e-mail. Not in instant messaging. Not in forums. Not on blog comments. Nowhere.

In 1999, people that did it for a legitimate purpose mainly used netspeak. In the here and now, only stupid kids use it. That’s a fact.

Conclusion

Be courteous, be kind, be polite and don’t aggravate or foster anger among your internet peers. That’s what netiquette is all about.