The Importance of Good Internet Etiquette

Three Easy Tips on How to Use Good Netiquette
Netiquette is an important topic due to the increasing popularity of the Internet. Avoid errors regarding cultural sensitivity, basic manners, and privacy violations.

Why Good Internet Etiquette is Important
Internet etiquette, or netiquette, has developed into an important topic as the internet has grown larger and increasingly diverse. Never before has there been such a wide range of diversity thrown into one arena. The Internet tosses people of varying cultures, political stances, races, and belief sets together in a way that makes the need for netiquette and cyber awareness more vital than it has ever been in the past. A new set of etiquette rules have developed over the last couple of decades thanks to the popularity of Internet usage. Virginia Shea, the author of the book Netiquette, describes netiquette as the etiquette of cyberspace. These new cyber-etiquette rules are continuing to change and develop quickly as the Internet grows.

Writing Entirely in Capital Letters is Bad Netiquette
Avoid using all capital letters in emails and other Internet conversations. This is one of the older netiquette rules – and it has been in place for over a decade. The document RFC1855: Netiquette Guidelines that was written in 1995 by Sally Hambridge offers details about the impropriety of the use of all upper case letters. Typing an entire message in capital letters, for example, is considered to be yelling and is poor netiquette. As a general rule people are also far less likely to pay attention to an entirely capitalized message. An occasional word or short sentence that is all capitalized can add emphasis to a message. An entirely capitalized paragraph, however, is inappropriate under almost all circumstances.

Violating the Privacy of Others is Improper Netiquette
Avoid sharing personal information about other people without their permission and knowledge. This includes sharing personal details, full names, addresses, phone numbers, and images. No one wants to find out that their privacy has been violated. If an email, for example contains private information, do not forward it without at least removing the names of those involved. It is cruel, and wrong, and most people would not want that done to them.

Everyone should treat other people’s private information the way they would want their own private information to be treated. Forwarding photographs with names attached is also an extremely inappropriate privacy violation. The fact that anyone can get a camera and take a photograph does not mean they have the right to post it online or send it to everyone in their address book.

Cleaning Up Email Forwarding Lists is Part of Good Internet Etiquette
An important part of email etiquette is to remove long lists of forwarded email addresses from email messages before forwarding them. Sure, it can be fun to see where an email has been, but many cleverly written emails travel the globe at lightning speed. People on the other side of the country – or even the globe – do not really need the email addresses of the hundreds of people who have already received the email. That is just an open invitation to spammers. Time has become a precious commodity, and leaving old email addresses in forwarded emails just wastes other people’s time.

The most important things to remember about netiquette are to respect other people’s privacy, consider that others might be coming from a very background that is very different from yours, and treat others with the same respect you want to receive.

Copyright Laure Justice. Contact the author to obtain permission for republication. Originally published on Suite101.com.