We aspire to the highest standards of email etiquette and hope that you do the same.
You may have been directed to this page because you sent an email which did not aspire to the same high standards of etiquette.
Your email is one of many in a day, we see them all so we're best placed to decide on the priority of messages. All you do by setting this flag is tell us the matter is important to you. We already know the matter is important to you or you wouldn't have sent the email. However this shows a complete lack of respect for the importance that we may assign to the same message. This flag represents a cry for attention and in our organization we remove all flags and replace with low importance, so use of this feature is self defeating.
To, Cc and Bcc
There are only three choices for addressing an e-mail, the 'To', 'Cc' and 'Bcc' fields.
First, there seem to be users who have no idea that the 'Cc' exists. Every address is listed in the 'To' even if the email is only directed to one person. In cases such as this the receivers have no clue as to who should take action so either they all do something or they all do nothing.
Secondly, there seem to be users who feel that an email should be copied to their entire address book whether it's relevant to those receiving it or not. These are the 'cry for attention' crowd. A nasty by product of this is that each email address gets added automatically to every recipients contacts list so the next time any one of these people receives a virus or phising email it may well get sent to everyone stored in their contact list. This now includes you.*
Here is the correct use of the address fields:-
The addresses in the 'To' are for the people you are directly addressing. One person is preferable, 2 or 3 is possible, more is inappropriate
The addresses in the 'Cc' are for the people you are indirectly addressing. Don't overdo it here. Copy only those who need to be copied; not your entire universe of contacts.
The addresses in the 'Bcc' are like 'Cc' except that the addresses in 'To' and 'Cc' do not know that the addresses in the 'Bcc' are included in the conversation. The 'To' and 'Cc' addresses are blind to the 'Bcc' addresses. As you can imagine, use of the 'Bcc' is somewhat unethical and therefore its use is discouraged.
*We are ruthless on this point. We automatically delete all emails which are sent to more than 10 people using the 'To' and 'Cc' fields. Furthermore, after review for security, we block all email addresses which send these email and the further recipients from being able to email our organization ever again.
Further advice on email etiquette is available here: http://www.emailreplies.com/