The horror of HTML (where it isn’t wanted)
I may need to give up on this; but not without a little noise.
Every day I receive some, let us say, 100 emails that are HTML-formatted. Some of these are really just text emails written by people who don’t know any better, or who have left intact the default formatting options of their email clients. Some are from people who think it’s really cool to add little formatting touches to their emails. Some are advertisements from companies that chuck in formatting, photos, even flash stuff.
So here is my plea to the world: Email is a text only communication device. HTML, or indeed any form of formatting or multimedia, is out of place here. Adding it takes away lots and lots of disk space and adds the risk of virus infection. So for heaven’s sake, send your emails unformatted, text only. Please.
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March 30, 2010 at 8:57 am
Can I add a more general plea to use plain text whenever possible, how often are we sent emails with .doc attachments containing basically text; why not just include the text in the email?
March 30, 2010 at 9:51 am
Rather than depending on the co-operation of your email senders (you’ll only influence the trustworthy ones), and requesting it via this blog (which reaches only a few people), your virus worries might be better addressed by installing robust anti-virus software.
I’d avoid the McN’s, who seem to market theirs using a combination of fear and confusion.
I get mine (Kaspersky) free via my bank, and they of course are entirely trustworthy.
March 30, 2010 at 11:06 am
Who mentioned viruses; my computer is virus proof, but I don’t understand why information which needs no formatting should be formated.
March 30, 2010 at 1:03 pm
Viruses were mentioned in the original blog Aoife.
March 30, 2010 at 11:02 am
I don’t see why email should be treated differently from other forms of correspondence since it is effectively replacing snail mail. Formatting, such as the use of italics, can sometimes be very effective in emphasizing a word. Or if you are not given to subtlety use bold.
And I have no problems with multimedia: a friend of mine regularly includes photos to show how much better/worse the weather is where he is. I appreciate the sentiment. As for the catastrophic loss of diskspace there is a simple trick: delete the email. Disk space now is so cheap, it’s not worth bothering about unless your computer is ancient (i.e. 3+ years).
Html rocks
March 30, 2010 at 11:21 am
Your message is touchingly quaint kd.
Add the photos as an attachment, or a link to a photo site, no need for html, and no need to force the recipient to look at the photo if they don’t want to.
Polite usage avoid employing more formatting or encoding than is needed.
Think of me as a Nancy Mitford for the digital age.
March 30, 2010 at 12:07 pm
So formatting is non-U?! I like it…
March 30, 2010 at 12:56 pm
Perhaps non U?
March 30, 2010 at 1:02 pm
punctuation,italics etc while not strictly necessary augment the basic text, allowing emphasis and tone so i don’t see why an email should be more spartan than a letter (not least because don’t send letters anymore). personally i am happy to have photos embedded as it saves me having to click on them & then close them etc. my friends are thoughtful enough to send me only photos in good taste.
March 30, 2010 at 12:58 pm
U
March 30, 2010 at 1:00 pm
Well the underline tag doesn’t work folks, but the italic does.
March 30, 2010 at 1:08 pm
Does the font tag work?
March 30, 2010 at 1:08 pm
No.
March 30, 2010 at 1:14 pm
Kevin, email was devised as a quick, resource-thrifty communication method. Adding lots of bytes through formatting and embedded objects makes them longer, disk-hungry, troublesome. A significant proportion of emails are now sent by mobile devices where such formatting creates issues.
Italics can be easily implied *like this*. Photos should never ever be sent by email, not even in an attachment, as they make systems crash. They should be uploaded on websites where they can then be seen and downloaded if desired.
March 30, 2010 at 2:13 pm
What you need to demonstrate here Ferdinand, is that one should only ever use things for what they were originally intended.
March 30, 2010 at 3:51 pm
*This* is ugly and I don’t see how its an improvement on italics. Just because email was devised as one thing that doesn’t mean it cannot evolve into something better: I have been told by my footman that there are phones that can even take pictures now.
Pictures have never caused me any problems and I will continue to enjoy receiving and occasionally sending them. By contrast, hot-links often cause problems.
March 30, 2010 at 1:18 pm
This shows which HTML tags you can use here in WordPress.
March 30, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Implying italics *like this* adds two bytes, and actual italics like this adds seven.
March 30, 2010 at 1:45 pm
No, inserting italics *like this* doesn’t add any bytes at all. Or rather, you cannot establish that it does, as you can send two perfectly identical emails that produce a different number of bytes. Adding the two asterisks (or any two additional characters) makes no difference to that whatsoever. You can test that by sending two identical emails and a third with the asterisks… Adding any element of formatting, even just once, adds a considerable number of bytes.
March 30, 2010 at 2:00 pm
This contains four bytes while *this* contains six. Each character occupies one byte.
March 30, 2010 at 1:45 pm
If you get 100 formatted, how many over your mail accounts do you get of a day.
March 30, 2010 at 1:59 pm
Vincent, on average about 250. Less on some days, more on others. Not counting spam, which gets zapped before it gets to me.
March 30, 2010 at 5:55 pm
Out of interest, how do those get managed? I get about a quarter of that amount, but which I have to manage entirely by myself – I can just about do that, but only just. So I presume that you have assistance…
March 30, 2010 at 1:50 pm
The correct, that is U, way to denote italics is _like this_; it actually refers directly to written correspondence where italics was denote with an underline rather than writing slanty. As for punctuation kd, why is html needed for punctuation?
@john: sorry, yes, viruses _were_ mentioned in the original post, I seem to have gotten into the habit of filtering out any discussions of computer viruses since they don’t effect me.
March 30, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Aoife, I think italics are *so*, whereas _this_ implies underlining. As for viruses, Aoife: Mac? Linux?
March 30, 2010 at 2:07 pm
Now macs are definitely non-U and stars are for actions *grins*, something you don’t find in traditional correspondence.
Underline marks were translated to different sorts of emphasis when hand-written documents were printed, for example, in mathematics an underlined character in written maths is printed as bold. As such, the underscore denotes _emphasis_ and can be thought of as italics, however, the equivalence is not well-defined, nor was it in traditional correspondence; when it needed to be, the equivalence was made well-defined using coloured pencils, but that wouldn’t have mattered when writing letters and so different people will have thought of the under-score in different ways.
March 30, 2010 at 2:28 pm
Aoife, I think underlining in mathematics can denote a vector, as distinct from a scalar.
March 30, 2010 at 2:32 pm
John: exactly and a vector is bold in type and underlined in your actual calculations. Maths is a minefield of usage, I routinely judge people on whether they us ln or log for the natural log or how they denote vectors or matrices.
March 30, 2010 at 3:33 pm
Judgethat u bejudged. (25 extra bytes).March 30, 2010 at 3:54 pm
In economics natural logs are used routinely so “log” is understood to be natural, partly as ln can be misunderstood.
March 30, 2010 at 3:58 pm
Oh yes, log rather than ln is U; I took that to be a given: only chemists and children use ln and unless you are a child both chemistry and childishness are non-U.
March 30, 2010 at 6:04 pm
HTML comes to the rescue here. To make it unambiguous, use the sub tag, which lets you do this: loge(x) and log10(x) and indeed log2(x) for us computerists.
March 30, 2010 at 6:10 pm
Well, as you can see, the sub tag doesn’t work in WordPress. Ho hum.
March 30, 2010 at 5:29 pm
Can I just point out that this may be a record number of replies to this blog – for a posting about html in emails…what does this say about us? I’m just asking…
March 30, 2010 at 6:36 pm
It may say something about the weather. It’s blowing a gale up here in Sligo. Who wants to go out in that?
March 30, 2010 at 6:47 pm
It’s a silly exchange for a serious day.
March 30, 2010 at 6:50 pm
Yes, the weather has been alarming all day, though certainly not as alarming as the news. Mind you, once you all started talking about vectors and logs, you completely lost me…
March 30, 2010 at 7:00 pm
We computerists, when we’re not drinking beer and eating food out of the vending machines, like to go on and on about details. It allows us to ignore the larger picture entirely. But you mustn’t get too fanciful. I recently compared an HTML script to the Latin mass and received blank looks all round.
March 30, 2010 at 7:17 pm
John, I would have thought a knitting pattern a better analogy.
March 30, 2010 at 8:19 pm
Let sleeve such embroidery to those, the fabric of whose surplice circumlocutions is woven in order to pull the wool.
Anything on telly?
March 30, 2010 at 7:41 pm
Shoot the messenger, not the message. Formatting, style and imagery can all enhance a message and are not out of place in email. Poor use of these features, just like poor spelling or grammar, are the responsibility of the user.
Any software feature introduces the possibility of flaws which can be exploited by malware, but supporting HTML in email is not in itself a virus risk. Although some email clients (particularly Outlook) are notoriously inefficient at encoding HTML, this is a software quality issue and not a problem inherent to storage of HTML email.
March 30, 2010 at 9:10 pm
Hey folks, I never thought I’d get such a response from what was essentially a throw-away post written while I was waiting for a meeting…
Actually, Jilly, I manage all those emails by myself only. There is a second email account to which my office have access, and that generates maybe another 50-60 emails a day. I suspect that when I cease to be in this post in a little over three months time, the email volume will go down significantly.
March 30, 2010 at 11:02 pm
I’m frankly astonished to see you advocating adherence to very old methods of technology use. Surely our use of technology changes as its capability changes. Would you say, for example, that since a mobile phone’s primary use is to make phone calls people shouldn’t use it to listen to music or take photographs? (Well, not if they want particularly good-quality photographs, at any rate).
As people – including yourself – moved from typewriters to computers capable of fancy word processing (even WYSWYG eventually), we took advantage of the ability to format documents, use proportional spacing and otherwise make what we produce look attractive and easy on the eye. Let’s face it: non-proportional fonts, particularly Courier which tends to be the default in text-only systems, are not easy on the eye. For some reason, I find Courier extremely tiring to read, and if I ever receive an email or document in Courier the first thing I do is convert it to a nicer font.
In the commercial world, as well, HTML emails create a more professional image – and in my own day to day working life, I much prefer HTML emails for things such as newsletters, of which I get a couple of dozen a month. If it’s in a HTML email, I can scan the content quickly for anything of relevance and follow a hyperlink if I need to for more information. If the email was simply a link to a website, I’d tend to leave it for ‘later’, when I hypothetically would have more time. ‘Later’, it’s buried by another two dozen emails. HTML saves me time.
Oh, sure, don’t include large and unnecessary images in an email; don’t use the ridiculous backgrounds Microsoft and other client supply. But don’t use HTML? What is this, the 1980s?
March 30, 2010 at 11:28 pm
Actually, Wendy, on this issue I am at the cutting edge. All the expert techies agree with my position. Formatted emails are not a sign of more advanced use of technology, but rather the email equivalent of a spoiler and adjusted loud exhaust on a Ford Escort…
March 31, 2010 at 12:14 am
Exactly: Wendy look at webpages, that whole sad rush to the inappropriate adornment, when people go to website for information and functionality, not adornment and flash heavy sites are now considered an embarrassment. There is nothing professional about changing your font, it shows a misunderstanding of the medium, the technology and the zeitgeist. When I advertize jobs I don’t even read the applicants who have fancy cvs.
Listen to me and ignore the fact that I exemplify a time noted for being doomed and shallow, my sisters are nazis and I am unlucky in love; I am also quite perceptive and acerbically funny.
March 31, 2010 at 12:17 am
He’s trying to get more posts. Next job on talk radio Ferdinand?
March 31, 2010 at 1:22 am
Over the past few years email clients have evolved to curb some of the worst excesses of HTML email. For example, viewing email only in plain text format is a perfectly valid use case and many email clients now support this. However, amongst other things, HTML email enables use of tables, diagrams, mathematical formulae, graphical emoticons, embedded links and convenient support for localization. Much as I love Ford Escort analogies, these features clearly advance the capability of email technology!
March 31, 2010 at 1:32 am
All the expert techies? I’d expect better from you when it comes to citing evidence…
If we’re going anecdotal, I can quite easily assemble a horde of ‘best techies’ for my side as well 
As for ‘fancy CVs’, Aoife, it’s as much a mistake to go over the top with formatting (unless you’re applying for a graphic design position, for example) as it is to stick with something completely unformatted. One (proportional) font, appropriate use of bold, italics and proper tabbing, and sent either as a Word or PDF attachment.
Of course design should not take away from the information offered, but there’s a happy medium between the uniform, plain-text format that makes the reader’s eyes blur and a format which is far more about style (often bad) than substance.
March 31, 2010 at 12:51 am
Nice one Aoife. Our posts crossed in the .. er .. post. Au contraire ma chère – far from being doomed, your attachment to the one true font (Comic Sans, yes?
) ensures you everlasting life in the logfile of eternity.
Sorry to hear about the sisters. Times New Roman has a lot to answer for.
March 31, 2010 at 1:16 am
Oh don’t worry; I am only from a doomed generation, and my sisters are only extremists, in my for-this-blog-entry Nancy Mitford persona: in fact, I don’t believe we are either doomed or shallow, I only have one sister and she is saint and, as for love . . .
Now, the one true font, as you well know, is _Computer Modern_.
March 31, 2010 at 7:12 am
Wendy: never, ever ever send a CV as a .doc attachment! Ever.
March 31, 2010 at 11:13 am
No Wendy. One must adhere to one’s (arbitrary) standards.
March 31, 2010 at 11:16 am
… in the hope that rigor is mistaken for significance.
March 31, 2010 at 10:52 pm
Aoife: I’m actually an employment counsellor, and in the business – at least where I work – it is sometimes obligatory to send one’s resume and cover letter by email as an attachment, or uploaded as an attachment via the company’s website. Read the employer’s stated preference for submitting an application – that is the only rule a candidate should follow, not someone’s arbitrary preference as to what should and should not be sent by email. The format is frequently recommended as a Word document; I haven’t seen ASCII format requested by employers for quite a while.
FYI: the reason many employers want resumes in electronic format is that they use keyword scanning software. (And the reason I talk about ‘resumes’ rather than ‘CVs’ is that I now live and work in Canada).
April 10, 2010 at 4:22 pm
So bold works.
March 31, 2010 at 10:05 pm
Good lord! There’s an awful lot of never ever ever-ing going on around here today.
Perhaps someone should tell Google that Buzz and Wave are mistakes? And very, very, very non U / non-U
March 31, 2010 at 11:37 pm
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Aoife is no more serious than Nancy Mitford was about this You / non-You business. It’s all a bit of a send-up. Of whom, I will leave you to judge.
April 1, 2010 at 12:33 am
Use Yoko Ono
On the U You yoyo.
April 10, 2010 at 4:24 pm
I should koko.
April 1, 2010 at 1:11 am
A bit of formatting would have helped there Sal. There’s a YouTube video on HTML. I’ll attach it in my next email. There’s a 100 page XHTML manual for the more discriminating formatter. I’ll bung that in as well. Anyway, as far as today is concerned, it looks like Ferdy and Aoife have beaten us to it.
April 1, 2010 at 1:35 am
Can I have the last word on this?
April 1, 2010 at 2:09 am
That remains to be seen. Personally, I think we could wring a little bit more out of it.
April 1, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Quite possibly Sally
April 1, 2010 at 10:32 pm
Economists should *never* be left with the last word; that’s why we’re in the state we’re in around here!
April 2, 2010 at 12:19 am
How to emphasize your cat.
April 2, 2010 at 12:25 am
Click
April 2, 2010 at 1:22 am
With HTML you can do this for example.
April 2, 2010 at 1:34 am
… or this.
April 2, 2010 at 10:26 am
… or this.
April 2, 2010 at 1:31 pm
Thanks folks, that’s very helpful.
April 3, 2010 at 3:26 am
In conclusion, HTML tags are the way text, pictures and sounds are formatted in web applications. (You can see them by clicking View / Source on the browser). HTML is intrinsic to web pages.
Learning HTML is very simple and will allow you to add formatting the program doesn’t prohibit yet doesn’t explicitly provide.
As a simple example, this blog doesn’t provide an easy way to italicize text, but you can italicize it yourself using the HTML i tag.
Examples of many of the most useful HTML tags can be found here.
May 10, 2010 at 1:28 pm
This is all quite funny. The sky is truly falling and we should spread the word on stone tablets!