Emails are a fantastic invention because they are quick, convenient, and straightforward. In mere minutes you can contact someone about any topic and receive a reply just as quickly. The problem arises with the true instantaneous nature of emails. How soon should you be expecting a response? Minutes? Hours? Days?
Barring some sort of emergency, you should avoid waiting days to respond to an email. But is it entirely reasonable to expect that a response should come within minutes of sending it? I know plenty of people who send emails, or text messages, at three o’clock in the morning and are perturbed when they do not receive a response right away. Some people are up at three in the morning, but in general it seems as though those people are few and far between. Is it entirely rational to expect a response when the person you’re contacting is likely otherwise indisposed?
Realistically, we should be praising the advent of email because it allows us to get correspondences out whenever we please without limitations on working days and hours of the postal service. However, it is important to remember that while we can send our initial email at any time or on any date, our recipient also has the luxury of responding to us at any time or date. Is three in the morning a convenient time for our recipient to be responding to their email? Not necessarily.
As with cell phone etiquette, we need to exercise some caution in how we send out our emails. In this case, the nine am to nine pm window is probably still the best time to send an email and expect a timely response. However, since it does not pose as much of an interruption as a phone call, there is not necessarily a real limit on when an email can be sent. The caution is here is that if getting a response is urgent, then it is appropriate to limit email correspondence to that nine am to nine pm time window; if not limited to this window, there is the caveat that the sender cannot be upset by a less than timely response. On the other hand, if receiving a response is not urgent, then it does not seem like a time cap is necessary.
Emily Post offers these three considerations for sending emails:
- Human contact still matters – Don’t communicate electronically at the expense of personal interaction. There’s a reason people often need to discuss things face-to-face, and there are times when no substitute will do – whether you’re breaking up with your boyfriend or asking your boss for a raise.
- Watch what you say, and how you say it – While the computer brings people together, its impersonal nature can lead to remarks that people wouldn’t think of saying in person. Do whatever it takes to stay courteous, even in that means taping a note to your computer reminding you to be decent and polite.
- Be careful when clicking Send – Whatever you say in cyberspace cannot be taken back. You have no control over where your message goes once you’ve hit Send; it can be saved and forwarded by any recipient who chooses to do so, and words have come back to hurt people, destroy friendships, and ruin careers.
True Life: I'm an Etiquette Nut 