How to Observe Netiquette

Netiquette describes the rules of common courtesy in cyberspace. Observing netiquette will keep you from advertising to your friends and co-workers that you are a newbie to the Internet. Learn the do's and dont's of proper behavior on the Internet and you'll fit right in as if you've been surfing the Net for years.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Use email wisely. Clogging up the inboxes of your friends with mindless forwards is not good netiquette. No one is going to send you money or give you a trip to Disneyland for forwarding emails. Please don't forward these to your whole email list "just in case." It wasn't true when those emails first hit cyberspace and it's not true today.

2. Know the proper format for emailing. Typing in all capital letters is considered shouting in cyberspace and is rude.

3. Remember that the recipient of your electronic correspondence is human. It's easy to lose sight of this, and fire off an angry email or post on a message board without thinking about how the person on the other end will receive it. Before you hit send, re-read and ask yourself if you would say these things in person.

4. Understand that words on a screen don't show the emotion behind them like talking to someone in person does. Learn to use popular emoticons to convey your emotions and add humor to your messages.

5. Observe netiquette when participating in message boards by sticking to the topic at hand and by not participating in disputation or personal attack. Remember that what you say in cyberspace is stored somewhere and may come back to haunt you someday.

Tips & Warnings

• If in doubt about the validity of an email that you've received, before you are tempted to forward it, check out the story at snopes.com.

Resources

• Snopes