Globally Speaking

Here are two tips that can help you prevent confusion when you email someone outside the country (or simply outside your organization).

1. Indicate the name of each "To" or "cc" recipient alongside his or her email address.

If you can do this, it will help all recipients recognize each other. The name portion of an email address sometimes includes initials or a nickname that might be unrecognizable to someone seeing it for the first time. For example, if someone receives an email that indicates a cc to jd@xmillennium.org, he wouldn't know that the copy goes to Jane Doe unless he was already familiar with her email address.

Use either of the following formats to indicate a recipient's name:
Jane Doe ‹jd@xmillennium.org›
jd@xmillennium.org (Jane Doe)

2. Use the full URL.

Whenever you include a Web address in an email message, double-check it for accuracy and be sure to include all elements of the uniform resource locator (URL). Most of today's standard email software packages that are version 3.0 or newer let the recipient go directly to a Web site by clicking on any URL that appears in the body of the email. If the URL is incomplete, the recipient's browser will show an error message instead of a Web page.

A complete URL includes the protocol descriptor (usually http://), the host name (for example, www.globalenglish.info), and all subdirectories.

A complete URL:
http://www.globalenglish.info/globallyspeaking/excerpt5.htm

Incomplete URLs:
www.globalenglish.info/globallyspeaking/excerpt5.htm
www.globalenglish.info/globallyspeaking/excerpt5
globalenglish.info/globallyspeaking/excerpt5.htm

Regarding the last of these examples, there are a lot of host names that don't include www. If your recipient tries to correct this type of incomplete URL by inserting http://www. in front of it, he might receive an error message when he tries to open the Web page.