Your top instant-messaging etiquette tips

COMMENTARY-- Face it: It's unreasonable to expect Miss Manners to rule on the finer points of our technological lifestyle, such as the niceties of instant messaging. Thankfully, TalkBack readers are more than happy to tackle the issue.

In his recent column on the do's and don'ts of instant messaging, my colleague David Coursey wrote that IM discussions let folks multitask, and can even cool down the charged atmosphere of face-to-face conversations. "It is more convenient, and more efficient, than picking up the telephone. But it is not without limitations," he wrote.

NOT EVERYONE was as upbeat on instant messaging as Coursey. While IM has insinuated itself into many of your everyday computing habits, there are times when contact isn't always welcome.

"With IM, cell phones, and pagers, everyone seems to have this opinion that I'm suppose to be open for conversation 24/7/365," Frank LaFone observed. "Know what? Sometimes I don't care if you have something important to say. I don't want to hear it."

However, for some people IM can be vital for communication, and not just a substitute for e-mail or a phone call. Teri-Lyn Calhoun wrote that "instant messaging is a WONDERFUL tool, especially when it comes to deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals. For many years, the hearing family members and friends didn't have a TTY due to the cost of the machine. But IM is FREE, hence, just about everyone has access to it, and they can now communicate with their deaf/hard-of-hearing family members."

Meanwhile, many of you offered etiquette tips to improve IM discourse and avoid miscommunication. Some of you also gave pointers on extending the range of messages. Here are just a few of your suggestions.

• Bob Hazy offered this concise list of useful tips.

  "Write briefly to reduce misunderstanding.
  Use emoticons when you sense the opportunity for misunderstanding.
  Seek an ACK [acknowledgement] when you sense they may be gone (to preempt one's own misunderstanding).
  Direct the chat to e-mail if it appears to be a substantial issue.
  Copy and paste important dialogs into e-mails to yourself and your chat partner (to create an audit trail for your collective records).
  And reread what you write before sending.

• Richard Maiello complained that the word "busy" just doesn't seem to hold the meaning it once did.

  "I used to put up a 'busy' status message when I was, well, busy, but still wanted to stay connected and available for important messages. I naively assumed that most people, upon seeing the 'busy' message, would refrain from IMing me unless what they had to say was more urgent than pointless banter or casual conversation.

  "How silly of me. The 'special' people to whom common courtesies don't apply routinely ignore such silly things as 'busy' messages. After all, they're 'special.'

  "So nowadays, I find myself logging in under Yahoo's Invisible Mode a good portion of the time. Those who are in-the-know know to click on me anyway, even if my little smiley face appears offline. I may well be there lurking in the shadows, hiding from the 'special' people." READ THE FULL TALKBACK.

• Chinh Do suggested that persons initiating an IM conversation should get to the point, without the "Hi" introduction recommended by Coursey.

  "When I get these 'Hi' messages, I have to stop whatever I am doing to look at the message, say 'Hi' back, and then wait for the real message. If you feel you must say 'Hi,' include the word as the first word in your message.

  "Also, it's better to type your first message as completely as possible, rather than spreading it out over several separate messages." READ THE FULL TALKBACK.

• Rick Cassel wrote that IM can be a productivity killer.

  "DONT use it at work for personal chat--it's the biggest time-waster for an employer. If IT gives us any more ways to become 'MORE PRODUCTIVE,' they could doom American business.

  "IM's the same as everyone standing around the water cooler instead of taking care of business. Whoops, what am I doing here? Gotta get back to work!" READ THE FULL TALKBACK.

• Ronald Miller recommended Cerulean Studio's Trillian IM client software, which can connect to most instant-messaging services.

  "I use it all the time. Works great. Try it, you'll like it!"

• James Fendley suggested IMForwards.com, a free forwarding service for instant messages.

  "You can choose to have your instant messages delivered to your cell phone, pager, PDA, an e-mail address, or all of them. It can be configured to invoke itself when you sign off of your IM client and turn itself off after you log-in."

  David Morgenstern, past editor of eMediaweekly and MacWEEK, is a freelance editor and branding consultant based in San Francisco.

  Have any other IM etiquette tips you'd like to share? What do you like most about IM? What do hate most about it? TalkBack to me below.