E-mail is widely believed to help people within public as well as private sector organisations share information efficiently, but the problem of e-mail overload is widely feared. The European Forum for Electronic Business (http://www.eema.org) has produced the following code to help individuals and organizations to use e-mail effectively and stop it getting out of hand. This list is an enlarged and adapted version of their recommendations.
 

• 1. Do you need to send it by e-mail at all? E-mail is not always the best option. Sometimes it is easier to pick up a telephone and talk to the person especially if the point is complicated. Do not e-mail someone sitting close to you -- ask him or her in person. Up to 15% of office e-mail is unnecessary.
• 2. Give your message a meaningful title [subject]. "Meeting" is not helpful, but "Meeting tomorrow is canceled" is.
• 3. Try to restrict action requests to only one recipient. Messages that are sent to more than one person might result in it being unclear as to who needs to take action. Address those who need to be informed but do not have to take any action as "cc" recipients.
• 4. Keep your message as brief as possible. Some people get a lot of e-mail and you can help them by getting to the point quickly.
• 5. Restrict the number of people to whom you address a message as much as possible. Do not copy ("Cc") more people than strictly necessary.
• 6.  Think whether a message should go to a distribution list. Company directories may contain distribution lists for general use. Many of these are intended for the distribution of official notices and thus contain large numbers of employees. Not everyone needs to receive a message intended only for some. Use your e-mail program to arrange addresses in "Folders" or similar sub-categories so you can direct the messages only to the addressees who should receive them.
• 7. Use the "Bcc" [blind carbon copy] field instead of the "To" field where you are distributing messages to several people, and where it is not necessary for each to know who else has received the message. This will reduce the size of the messages.
• 8. Various "odd" characters can be changed during transmission. It is recommended that alpha abbreviations be used for currency instead of the symbols (USD, GBP, NLG, etc.). For a similar reason be careful with quote marks and foreign language characters (characters with umlauts, breves, tildes, etc.) should be avoided.
• 9. Do not distribute message information within an attached word processor document where plain text or rich text within the e-mail can suffice. Word processor generated files will typically be significantly larger. (Hint: Save the document as a "txt" file in any word processing program.)
• 10. Do not send courtesy thank you messages on a day-to-day basis where you are e-mailing a person regularly.
• 11. Delete unwanted addresses and change-retained addresses to "Cc" status unless action is required from them.
• 12. Do not retain original attachments when replying unless this adds to the clarity of your reply.
• 13. When replying to a bulletin published on a public distribution list or bulletin board consider whether your response should be sent to just the originator of the bulletin or to everyone subscribed to the list.
• 14. Use file compression software for large attachments. However, be aware that not all companies have unzipping facilities, so be prepared to re-transmit "in clear" if the recipient complains.
• 15. Use the "Urgent" flag sparingly, otherwise its impact will be diluted.
• 16. Do not use the "Read receipt" indiscriminately. The correct use is as a check to an important action requested by e-mail. Some messaging systems allow the use of message "Flags" which will automatically prompt the recipient to reply after a defined period of time, again use this sparingly.