New communications tools give you as much exposure as e-mail. Unfortunately, mistakes in your e-mail will receive that same exposure too. Depending on who sees your email, your job, reputation, or career could suffer. Fortunately, avoiding these mistakes is easy. Here are five email habits that annoy me (and maybe you too) and what you can do differently.

1. Replying to the whole world

Before hitting Reply To All, make sure you really need to do so - unless you're KSP and want everyone to know what you have to say. Does everyone need to see your response? Does your response benefit everyone else? Or are you sending merely a private response or addressing a personal issue with the sender? In these situations, it’s better just to do a simple Reply. Otherwise, your private disagreement becomes public (and embarrassing) knowledge.

Be aware that if you receive a message because you’re part of certain message groups (e.g., a Yahoo group), your reply might go to everyone in the group even if you just hit Reply.

2. Sending before thinking

When you were small, your mother probably told you to count to three before responding to someone (mine told me to count to 10). Why did she say that? She knew that answering before thinking can lead to problems.

Make sure you really mean to say what you’ve written. People can interpret your words differently from what you meant. A statement made in jest to someone via email may have a greater chance of being misinterpreted than one made in person. Also, be careful about reacting and replying too quickly to an e-mail that upsets you.

3. Changing the topic without changing the subject

When you send e-mail, make sure the subject line matches the actual subject. If you’re going to send a note via a reply, change the subject line to match the actual subject.

4. Including multiple subjects in one note
Covering multiple topics in one note involves less sending and hence less e-mail traffic and volume. However, your recipient might overlook one or more of those topics. It’s better to keep to one topic per message.

5. Vague or nonexistent subject line

Make it easy for recipients to know what your message is about. If you’re like most people, you have an in-basket that summarizes your incoming messages, probably by date, sender, and subject. Don’t you love it when you can get the information you need simply from the subject line? The sender has made it easy for you and saved you time.