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Do You Really Want to Send HTML-formatted Emails?
In the beginning there was Plain Text email. No colours, no
fonts no pictures and no smileys winking at you: just the unadorned
message, the grist; the message was the medium.
Then there was the great innovation - (was it by Microsoft? If not they
certainly encouraged it) - to apply the language of webpages to email in
order to apply formatting in a way that would survive the text-only
transmission method used by email and so control the way the your email appeared in
the recipient's email program.
There are two views on HTML email,
either it stops emails looking boring and provides a way for companies
to add style and convey a corporate identity with their emails or it
adds unnecessary baggage to emails that detract from the message.
Some
early problems with HTML emails were:-
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Inconsistency. You couldn't be sure how the recipient's
email program would display your email. It might just look like
gobbledygook. |
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Virus writers and other miscreants could hide dirty tricks
within the HTML code. |
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HTML emails are more likely than plain text emails to be
considered to be spam. |
Although these problems still exist, there not such a big issue now
that HTML emails are more common.
I'm agnostic on the subject. Some
light formatting can make emails easier to read but I think that HTML
formatting gives spam filters more things to object to in an email.
There are still a few organisations, such as the Police, who refuse to
accept HTML emails.
I personally send plain text emails but my message in this article it that
you should make your own conscious decision what type of emails you're
going to send and not just accept the default settings of your email
program.
Here's an example of what the raw content of a plain text
email looks like compared the same email with HTML formatting.
So you can say that HTML formatting, on average, triples the size of the
email.
How to Specify the Type of Emails that you Send out
In Outllook:-
In Outlook Express:-
Stationery
This is a feature of Outlook and Outlook Express where an extra layer
of HTML formatting can be applied to each email you create to achieve
effects such as textured paper.
It's tempting, for some people, to setup different
signature/stationery combinations for each email address you send out
as.
While Outlook can automatically link signatures with accounts,
there's no way that I can find to link different stationery settings
with accounts except by changing it manually each time, which would be a
pain.
I recommend that if you send out from more than one address then you
don't use stationery. Striking effects can be achieved with HTML
signatures alone.
When you forward an email, Internet conventions say that you're not
supposed to modify the original email so Outlook will not apply your
stationery effects to forwarded emails to honour this. It's
possible to over-ride this setting but this is another reason not to use
stationery.
Signatures
How come a concept as simple as adding a standard bit of text to the
bottom of each email can get so complicated?
Outlook creates 3 versions of each signature that you setup: an HTML
version, a Rich Text version and a Plain Text version. These are the 3
types of email formatting that you might use to create a new email and
Outlook will select the correct version to use to match the format of
the email.
The default option in Outlook is to reply to an email using the same
format as the original email so even if you always create HTML emails,
these alternative signatures will be used in replies.
As you only create one version of a signature, the other two version
that Outlook creates sometimes aren't perfect - perhaps line breaks are
in the wrong place.
Luckily you can edit all 3 versions manually so your signature will
always appear just as you want it.
The signature files are stored here......
If you created an HTML signature using Outlook's editor you may
notice that your signature on Plain Text replies doesn't look right. In
this can you need to edit the file...... in a text editor such as
Notepad.
If you subsequently edit your HTML signature with Outlook, it will
update the other 2 versions and so you'll need to re-check these and
perhaps edit them again.
Last Word
To be honest, I'm a little bit suspect of my preference for Plain
Text emails. If I heard someone advocating a return to the early days of
word processors where the only font was Courier I would think them mad
and I can remember how I rejoiced when I got my first WYSIWYG word
processor - Word for Windows 2 I think it was - If I consider formatting
to be OK for documents and, as you see, web pages, why do I wish my
emails to be devoid of it?
Besides the reasons given elsewhere on this page of using less
bandwidth and there being less chance of an email being miss-classified
as spam, for me emails are short, sweet, to-the-point chunks of
information. If I want you to know my life story I'll include a link to
it.
In many cases emails are the equivalent of hand-written notes where
multiple fonts and other adornments are unnecessary. (All my notes are in
Spiderscrawl Sans 14 Bold.)
There may well be good reasons to put a 2 paragraph disclaimer at the
bottom of each email and/or a signature designed to convey the gravitas
or stylishness of your business but to me it's just dead weight to haul
around the Internet which just adds entropy to your message.
But before I get carried away i forgot that I'm agnostic on the
subject of HTML formatted emails.
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