There are certain rules for being polite online, believe it or not! Otherwise known as “Netiquette”, these are the top 10 ranked rules for you to follow in order to survive the online world.
- Never type a group of words or a phrase in upper case. IT MAKES IT LOOK AS THOUGH YOU ARE SHOUTING, doesn’t it? Other people will get the feeling that you are being a bit rude. The best idea is to stick to regular sentence case when blogging, emailing, commenting, messaging, etc…
- Always speak to others the way you would expect yourself to be spoken to in the physical world. Do not curse, swear, or insult others- just imagine what you’d feel like if you were spoken to like that!
- Make use of emoticons like
and 
which help you to get your message across. At certain times, what you write in emails or messages may be misunderstood (omg i have too much experience in this matter lol) and using emoticons will help the understanding of your message. They also add a bit of color and interest to the message.
- Patience is the key on the web these days. If you are upset or angry about something, try and wait a while before writing another message. This way, you can calm down and think carefully about your wording in terms of politeness. Remember, once you hit ’send’, your message has gone into cyberspace forever!
- Get to the point! Do your best to keep your messages brief and to the point. This way, the receiver will get a clear understanding of what you mean to say.
- Be careful with using the “Reply All” option whilst in contact online. Do you really want everyone to get this message or only the person who sent it to you?
- If someone bullies you or writes something bad to you, don’t insult them back. Why? Cause it just doesn’t work! Simply ignoring them or blocking their messages does the trick. If your using a messaging service like AOL, Yahoo, or Gmail (As well as thousands of others) then here’s a little way of permanently annoying them. Save a copy of every email that was sent to you which you considered offensive and send directly to the administrators or customer service. This will most likely ban the perpetrator from ever using the service ever again (Ive done this loads of times and it works every single one of them).
- Never reply to people online who you do not know. The likelihood of malicious software being present is extremely high these days, and the worst case scenario is where a certain person wants to hurt you!
- Never forget to greet people politely in every message you send. It really makes you seem like a friendly person.
- Do not forward or create spam or chain letters. People would hate you to the max if you did this. It wastes time and has no point. Chain letters are just sometimes random and no one really gives anyway…
September 13th, 2008 at 12:22 am
Lol DOES THIS MEAN IM SHOUTING???
September 13th, 2008 at 1:36 am
I need help with #5- brevity is not my strong suit. I will try to start now-:)
September 14th, 2008 at 3:23 pm
Learn the art of BCC when forwarding emails. No one wants to know all of your neighbors’ coworkers’ email address.
October 19th, 2008 at 9:37 pm
Interesting tips for online users. Well done
November 26th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Too bad this can’t be reprinted everyday and deposited into the inbox of those who break these rules. Nicely done.
December 1st, 2008 at 3:55 pm
HIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIHIH
December 25th, 2008 at 9:59 pm
1. You forgot the golden rule of not writing the addreses in the To:, Cc: if they exceed 3 UNLESS THE MESSAGE IS TO LET THE RECIPIENTS KNOW WHO RECIVED IT.
2. UPPER CASE and Highlights and coluring all all part of the special emphasis and you can see that in all newspapers and magazines on line.
February 24th, 2009 at 5:29 pm
This has very good information.
September 23rd, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Author, ever heard of something called a chatroom?
ZOMGWTFBBQSAUCE ROFLMAO AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA.
But seriously, your rules fail.