Benjamin Golub’s blog

I never reply to an email without first checking my inbox for related emails; replying without reading ahead is a pet peeve of mine that people do all the time. Here’s a common scenario:

I send an email to my fraternity list to schedule a Greek Week practice and then quickly receive an email from another captain saying that they scheduled a practice for that time but forgot to use the calendar to let everyone else know. So I send an updated email to the list with new information. Inevitably I will get emails from at least 4 people telling me that I made a terrible mistake, we can’t have practice then, and I’m crazy. Each of these people will then send an apologetic email exactly 2 minutes later.

Like I said, it’s just a pet peeve and not a huge problem but it’s such an easy fix; just read ahead! Plus, this is good practice for the real world when you definitely don’t want to do this at work; it makes you look like you aren’t organized and are out of the loop. Google helps me out here with a feature in Gmail that notifies you if an email thread you are currently replying to gets another email added to it. Someone may have been just a little faster than me so I always read the new reply before sending my own.