Email Etiquette: Read This Before You Hit 'Send'

Editor's note: If you have a pressing business-etiquette question for Miss Conduct, please send her an email.

Emily Post wrote, "The art of letter-writing is shrinking until the letter threatens to become a telegram, a telephone message, a postcard." Clearly, even back in 1922, email and text-messaging were on the horizon, and nota bene, etiquette writers like Post were among the first to notice.

With the pen being mightier than the sword, email is an effective business tool; many businesspeople spend the better part of their days using it.

Yet too many writers treat the sharp edges of their words with too cavalier an attitude. That's fine as long as relationships are trotting along, but when the pace or heat of the situation increases, sloppy use of email can undercut your bottom line. (Or so Miss Conduct has read -- mostly in forwarded emails.) ...