- Address recipients in the 'To' field that you expect or need a reply from.
- Address recipients in the 'Cc' field who are receiving your email for informational purposes only.
- Use the 'Bcc' field to hide the email address of recipients from other recipients.
- Help keep email thread replies (e.g. messages containing previous replies) chronological and easily readable.
- 4.1. Edit your reply to keep previous quoted replies chronological.
- 4.2. Edit your reply to remove unnecessarily nested/quoted replies.
re: 1 & 2...
If you only address in the 'To' field the recipients you expect or need a reply from, recipients can choose to filter on their address being present in the 'To' field to help prioritize their email. If they are *not* specifically in the 'To' field, they can read the email on a lower priority basis. In a work environment, this becomes very handy very quickly.
re: 3...
Yes, this is a classic use field in business as a Cover Your Ass (CYA) tactic but in personal emails, using Bcc is a polite method of hiding recipients from one another. Maybe your humor list contains friends who would rather everyone else on your humor list not find out their email address or that they're even on your humor list.
re: 4...
This is probably the most difficult rule to follow because it involves more of your time. When replying to an ongoing email thread, clean up the previous replies to remove excessive nested/quoted text *and* keep the previous replies chronological. Especially important in a business environment, reading an email msg containing previous quoted replies should be simple to read. Excessively nested/quoted replies are difficult for the human eye to read and follow. If you've ever received an email with lots of lines prefixed with >>>>>> or visual nesting pushing things off to the right, you'll know what I'm talking about.
