This post is a little different. After sifting through thousands of emails, we have learned a thing about this ever-evolving form of Internet communication. Below we share our tips for email gotchas. It’s a little bit of everything, humor included.

  1. Custom fonts. You may be tempted to use any of these pretty fonts from your PC. Keep in mind that most of your recipient’s devices will ignore it and render using a default font.
  2. Motivational and inspirational quotes in signatures; not everyone’s values align with yours.
  3. Images in signatures. They take up storage and don’t adjust to mobile or accessibility devices. Users with vision impairments may not be able to read your signature since it will not adjust to their custom font/size preferences. Information in the signature, such as a phone or a web address cannot be copy-pasted if it’s embedded in the image.
  4. Links to articles or websites in your signature. They increase the SPAM score of your domain (school Internet name) as links are considered advertisements.
  5. Pointless certifications. Your name, job title, perhaps a phone are quite sufficient. A certification from 2015 is very much out-of-date!
  6. Looooooooooong lines in signatures. They wrap around on mobile devices throwing off any formatting you have carefully tried to preserve. Try to keep it below 72 characters per line.

Have other suggestions for effective email communication? Share them with us.