E-mail graciousness

Just as there are rules to being a gracious hostess when you invite guests to your house, so too are there e-mail graciousness rules when inviting people to participate in a project. The first one is to acknowledge that you received someone's message. If you think your project will draw quite a bit of response, the easiest way to manage your replies is to draft a general purpose "Thank You..." letter that you'll just have to pull out and whiz off.

1. Draft your letter in your favourite word processor and save it. Even though it's "general purpose", write it with one person in mind and make it enthusiastic and welcoming. The content will really depend on the nature of your project and what you need to tell participants upon their first communication with you. It could be...
   • Thanking them for their contribution and telling them what to expect next.
   • Thanking them for registering in your project and adding further information about upcoming activities, deadlines, or more about project content.
2. When you receive a message that warrants this reply, use the "Reply To" button of your e-mail to redirect the message back to it's sender automatically. Then...
   • Open your word processor and bring up your letter.
   • Select (highlight) the entire letter and Copy it (use the Edit/Copy command of your word processor's menu bar)
   • Switch to the e-mail screen and Paste your letter at the top of the reply (use the Edit/Paste command of your E-mail's menu bar).
   • Add a few finishing touches such as a personal greeting at the top and delete large portions of the original e-mail to shorten your reply (the original usually has a series of > signs at the beginning of each line).
   • Send your reply.

If you need detailed instructions about how to toggle between applications see " How to Copy a text from a Word Processor to Paste it into an E-mail message".