Etiquette in the Information Age – Volume 1
Your new computer came with the latest and greatest word processor software (version 23). It seems like a good idea to fancy up your emails and communications by using the best software you can, right? BUT— what if everyone else doesn’t share your love of proprietary software or wish to support the short life-cycle and high costs of the mighty mega-software companies? Plain Text is the answer. Sometimes (like if you are sending to people in your own company, and you know everyone has the same computing capabilities you do) it is fine to send out special files, but if you are trying to communicate to an audience that isn’t under the control of a single governing body (like a single IT department) it is a good idea to use the format is common to everything: Plain Text. Plain text shows up correctly on every screen, every operating system, every device. It is the common denominator of electronic media. Plain text does not use bold, underline, italics, color backgrounds, font sizes, inline graphics, music, animation, or URL links; it is just pure, plain, simple TEXT.
It is easy to configure your email client to send plain text. If you need to use formatted text, then HTML is a good choice, and most email clients can be configured to send in the HTML format. Most recipients using computers can read the HTML-formatted messages without trouble, but be aware they can get mangled up when forwarded or sent through message groups. Some email systems consider embedded links to be spam messages, so there is a possibility your email will never be delivered. These are more reasons why plain text emails are preferable.
If you do need to send a special document of any format, consider converting it to a PDF before attaching it. The PDF format is now an open standard and helps ensure the recipient will be able to view the document correctly. Document formats that require special software to open should be avoided if at all possible.
Be aware that many people read email on mobile devices now, and viewing formatted text (even HTML) or handling attachments of any type can be a problem. Viewing plain text is not a problem!
I hope it is clear why using plain text simplifies the task of communicating to a diverse group of people electronically. If you need more reasons, keep reading!
The following are some more arguments for using plain text that I discovered while browsing around the interwebs:
Plain Text:
- doesn’t age. It is the most used format of saving data and this is not going to change.
- doesn’t have a version. There are no backward compatibility issues.
- allows the focus to be on the content, not on a specific software product.
- fits into anything. You can use text in your email, instant messenger, site, blog, wiki, word processor, program code, personal information manager. It may be hard to go back from any of these… unless they use plain text.
- remains itself outside computer. Do you have very old book or printout? You can scan it and get text. Do you have old five inch floppy disk? You can throw it out together with useless deteriorated data on it.
5 Reasons You Should Still Create Plain-Text Emails
- Some people just prefer plain-text emails.
- Spam filters don’t like it when you send HTML only. They want to see HTML along with a plain-text alternative, because only a “lazy spammer” would skip the plain-text step. Also, the plain-text email should be roughly the same content as the HTML email (not just a vehicle for “visit this URL to see our HTML email in your browser!”).
- In certain situations, plain-text emails can be better than HTML emails. If you send daily alerts, news feeds, and things that are sent very frequently and need to be quickly scanned, plain-text works great. You don’t want to send huge, image-heavy emails every day. People will burn out fast.
- Mobile devices. More and more people are checking email on Blackberries and cell phones. Not all of them display HTML properly. Some of them only display the text portion of HTML (removing your images, or stacking them vertically). Some of them only display plain-text. Play it safe and make your plain-text back up message for every campaign.
- Banks and financial institutions should know that when they send HTML emails with open-trackers and click trackers, modern email programs warn their users about “potential privacy threats” or “this could be a phishing attempt.” You don’t want to jeopardize your reputation this way. Plain-text emails (at least for all your transactional messages) are safer than HTML emails.
Tip: Use little characters like (*) to make bullet points, and use ====== as line separators.
Would you like to read your most important documents ten years from now?
Do you use programs for saving them that might disappear by then?
