6. Use bullets or numbering in your messages to make them easier to read. Reading from a computer screen can be difficult on eyes. Make this task easier for your recipient by making ample use of white space. Avoid long, dense paragraphs.

7. Be wary of formatting features you use (like bolds, colors, and underlines), especially if you are sending message to someone outside of your company. Many email systems strip messages down to

plain text. If you've sent a message with a lot of fancy formatting in it, your recipient may end up with gibberish.

8. Highlight specific action you want recipient to take at end of your message. Few things are more frustrating than reading a long email message only to get to end and not be clear on what sender wants from you.

9. Read your message out loud before you hit send button. Keep tone of your message professional while at same time adding bits and pieces of your personality. Given that deleted emails are never really deleted, never put something in an email message that you would not want to see on Local News. Also, never say anything in an email message that you would not say to recipient's face. You should not hide behind an email to deliver a difficult message. Pick up phone.

10. When all else fails, pick up phone. If you find yourself exchanging email with a person 3 or 4 times in order to clear up a single issue, time had come to pick up phone. Email is supposed to make communicating easier, not more frustrating. It is amazing how a 10-minute call can clear up confusion that a 3-page email created.

Bonus Tip If you have a short message to send, put it in subject line, this will completely eliminate need for recipient to open email.

Example 1: Reminder: Status reports due by 5:00 pm (EOM) Here EOM means End of Message. Be sure you communicate that abbreviation to your team before you start using it. This format is ideal for quick reminders.

Example 2: MARY // Thanks for report. It was perfect! // SUE In this example, subject line contains greeting, message, and closing. It is self-contained and its obvious to receiver that your total message is in subject. This format is great for sending people a quick Thank You note.

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© Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved. Myrtis Smith is a personal coach. Her mission is to help people create their preferred future and have fun doing it. Sign up for her free newsletter Change Now! at www.premeditatedlife.com .......because life doesn't just happen!

Since your email message, and that of everyone else, must pass from one server to another to finally reach intended recipient, that message can be intercepted at any of those servers through which it must pass.

Your personal message to a loved one can become a public document on Internet thus exposing your inner most feelings and intimate thoughts.

Emailing a co-worker about sensitive business information can fall into hands of someone friendly with your competition. Those sales projections or notes on a new client could easily be turned against you.

That would be truly unfortunate since technology already exists for making your email messages secure.

The best solution is that of email encryption.

There are many email encryption options which are available to average Internet user and many of these options are FREE to use. Not bad for getting that James Bondish feeling.

Perhaps best of these options is a software program called Pretty Good Privacy, PGP. It is free to use and to distribute and has been around longer than I have been on Internet, since 1991.

"PGP® or Pretty Good Privacy® is a powerful cryptographic product family that enables people to securely exchange messages, and to secure files, disk volumes and network connections with both privacy and strong authentication." PGP is Freeware.

Download your FREE copy of this software at: http://www.pgpi.org/

Another solution is Secure Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions, S/MIME protocol, an industry standard supported by almost all of latest email programs and web browsers, including Microsoft and Netscape.

S/MIME incorporates Digital Certificates, which authenticate identity of an emails sender and receiver, verify integrity of a message and ensures privacy of content.

It only takes a few minutes to get a Digital Certificate in order to secure your email. However, it does cost $ 14.95 per year to maintain certificate. You can try it for 60 days FREE at:

We managed to find several, completely "FREE Secure Email Services", that we have compiled in a list via Auto-Responder at: mailto:secure_email@emailexchange.org

Another excellent FREE source of Privacy info is The Electronic Privacy Information Center, EPIC. They offer an online guide that shows users how to get PGP and other encryption programs as well as how to surf anonymously and dealing with cookies.

The EPIC guide also shows users how to download PGP via email: You just send a request to mailto:ftp-request@netcom.com with Subject line "SEND mpj/getpgp.asc."

You can access their FREE Resources at: http://www.epic.org/privacy ools.html

Most of us can not see need for secure email.

But it is important to consider in this day and age where your email can be read by unintended people and it is certainly a cure for identity theft which can harm your peace of mind and also your pocket book.