Dear ISF Colleagues,
Here are a few tips for making your contributions to the list more
readable:
- Use only plain text. This list doesn't support graphics, HTML, or
attached documents.
- Separate each paragraph with a blank line.
- Avoid using all capital letters. In email, this is equivalent to
shouting, and considered an insult to one's readers.
- Clean up jagged margins; readers tend to get so discouraged by them
that they skip your message and go on to the next one.
- Identify yourself. Readers pay more attention to a message when
there's a name and organizational affiliation attached to it.
- Trim, trim, trim! Unnecessary repetitions of previous posts, list
footers, and signature lines are tedious for other members to
negotiate. If you're replying to a previous message, please trim away
everything but the essentials of that message and your response to it.
If you don't trim your post down, and I think that it would benefit
from trimming, then I edit it myself. This means extra work for me,
and a trim job for your message that you as the author may deem unduly
harsh.
- Double-check your subject line, and make sure that it summarizes the
topic. If you subscribe to the digest format of the list, then the
subject line will automatically be something like "Digest Number 123."
Please change it to something more topical. It's also helpful to trim
away clutter from previous generations of forwarding; "FW: Grants for
Nonprofits"; is much more readable than "Fwd: FW: Re: FW:
[NTEN-Discuss] RE: Grants for Nonprofits."
- Write for an international readership. If you say that an event is
happening tonight at "the Firehouse in J.P.,"; those of us in Boston,
Massachusetts will know that you mean "the Firehouse Multicultural Art
Center in Jamaica Plain," but maybe the folks in Thailand or Argentina
won't. And if they need to fly in to attend, it's probably a good
idea to give them more than a few hours' notice.
- Write about subjects that pertain to how nonprofit organizations can
use information and communication technologies to increase
organizational effectiveness. Readers subscribe to the list because
they are interested in this specific topic. If you stray too far from
it, other members of the group are likely to ignore your messages.
- Frame your message in the language of civil discourse, and avoid
inflammatory rhetoric. Posts that are simply attacks on someone
else's religion, operating system, ethics, ancestry,internet service
provider, or attitude are unacceptable in this email distribution
list. The rule of thumb is to assume that others are motivated by the
best intentions, even when you think that they are gravely mistaken.
Thanks for your attention to these tips. I'm sure that you will find
that following these suggestions is in your best interests. I also
take it as a great personal favor, since I review every message before
it is circulated; I often have to spend considerable amounts of time
cleaning up or reformatting messages before they go out to the group.
Many thanks and best regards from Deborah
Deborah Elizabeth Finn
Information Systems Forum moderator
.
