Rule #2- “Reply-All”- Use it only when you need it, and triple check that you are “replying-all” to only the intended list of recipients.

Dearest Online Correspondent:

The “Reply-All” option in an e-mail message is a sociable sorority sister’s best friend and a private person’s pet-peeve. Even though, I would normally vouch for the fact that I am more of a private person than a sociable sorority sister, I’ve chosen to “reply-all” for eight years to a list of recipients that includes nine of my closest friends from high school since we graduated in 2000 and departed for college. The reason that I remain on the “reply-all” list is because I realize that I am a lucky person to be blessed with nine lovely ladies as friends.

The last time that all ten of us convened was during Thanksgiving of 2008, which happened to coincide with my birthday. For this special occasion, I bought one J.CREW gold rimmed sea-green colored bracelet to give to all of us.

Now, at this point, you must be wondering how one bracelet can be shared among ten people? The notion behind giving one bracelet to share among ten people was based on the book and film, “Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.” The idea behind the “traveling pants” is that a temporary caretaker of the shared pair of pants would pass the pants onto another caretaker only after something “positively life-changing” happened to her, such as getting engaged, being accepted into graduate school, or buying a house. In other words, the one bracelet, to which I was giving to all nine of my friends, carried “good karma,” which would be useful during critical circumstances during each of our lives.

Additionally, when giving the bracelet to all of us, I made up a rule. Bet you can’t guess I like rules at this point?! Anyways, the rule was: at the time that the temporary caretaker relinquishes the bracelet, she must send a report, via an e-mail message, in the usual “reply-all” fashion, to the rest of us about the “positively life-changing” thing that had happened to her.

If you are still reading about this rule, I owe you thanks, as you probably have no interest in following a “traveling bracelet,” but to make the story worthwhile, let’s sum it up in one sentence. At the time that the first person with the bracelet (Let’s call her Tatiana) wrote her report about the “positively life-changing experience” via an e-mail, Tatiana selected a recipient list that did not include just her nine friends. Instead of selecting just us, Tatiana selected a recipient list that included, in addition to us, many attendees of the funeral of one of our friend’s father. The e-mail included the friend’s boyfriend, ex-boyfriend, as well as many other individuals, and the message body included sensitive information about our own lives: whether “X” had got into business school and whether “Y” had found a husband.

Despite Tatiana’s mix-up with the intended recipient list, we are still friends with her, and the bracelet is still “traveling,” That said, Techiquette still thinks that the best practice (BP) is rule #2.

Do you agree, or do you follow your own rule when it comes to “reply-all?”

Sincerely,

Techiquette

P.S. Thank you for the e-mail messages about your ideas for the “rules of online correspondence.” The most popular ideas have include the Blind Carbon Copy (Bcc) option, signatures, e-vites, and breaking up with boyfriends or girlfriends over an e-mail or gchat. Please continue to e-mail your questions about online etiquette to: Techiquette@gmail.com.