Subject: something the whole family is interested in
This gets more complicated if you’re sending to a more disparate group of kin, with cousins and aunts and people unrelated to each other. But in the family emails I get, I see a consistent pattern of traditional respect in the ordering of the recipients. Seems silly, but I do it too.
My family doesn’t even follow that when serving meals, much less with email (we serve little children whose food will have to be parent-processed first).
I for one do not at all pay attention at all to the order of e-mail addresses, because I assume the recipients do not pay attention either.
I do pay attention to the order in the salutation (‘dear x, y and z’), observe the conventional order of precendence and sometimes agonize about that line when people of same precedence but different personal relationship are involved.
Other than business emails if I am sending something to lots of people I blind copy everyone. I figure that no-one needs to know what I think other people are interested in.
Don’t do it, don’t care. I do, however, pay attention to who is on the To: line and who is on the CC: line, because those on the CC line don’t get addressed in the mail.
Put yourself in the “TO:” line, and put everyone else in the “BCC:” line. That way:
(1) They know who’s most important to you (as if they didn’t already); and
(2) They don’t even know who your other friends/relatives are, let alone their order of precedence.
But for business emails my policy is alphabetic order, with those who might need to take some action in the “TO:” line and those who just might want to be kept in the loop in the “CC:” line.
The order is usually based on the order that names pop up either in my contact list (therefore alphabetical) or “hey, I bet this person would like this too!” (therefore random). It has never occurred to me to look, notice or care what order email addresses are in; that’s like thinking the hydro bill is less important than the KFC spam in my mailbox because the flyer was on top!
I’d also check in as part of the ‘don’t care / never noticed’ crowd but I can sort of see a rationale.
If you’re mentally going down the line of the family tree, it seems like a logical progression to start at the top and work your way downward. Or maybe not.
My question for **masonite **though, if you randomly shook up the “To” line, do you think anyone would notice and subsequently call you out on it?
I only worry about my mom. She has to be first. Especially if one or more of my son’s other four grandmothers are on the list. Often what I’ll do is send the email to myself with everyone else BCCed.
I would find anyone that could be genuinely insulted by where they do or don’t fall in the order on an email recipient list to be offensively narcissistic. This level of vanity and arrogance deserves swift and blindingly painful ass-kicking of the highest order.
