>during our promotional giveaway here at
>XYX Company...This is either the result of multiple forwarding, or poor formatting on the part of the
sender. Not many people would try to interpret this kind of mess if it was sent to them
by a stranger, even if the information was requested. How can you avoid giving your
autoresponder messages that choppy, I-can’t-use-a-computer feel?
First, you should understand why this occurs. Every e-mail program is different, allowing
different line lengths for their viewing windows. If your e-mail program allows 75
characters per line, it may look fine on your screen—but when you send it to someone
whose program allows only 70 characters per line, those last five characters get moved
to the next line and break up your message with those pesky > signs. Another potential
problem is the font you choose. Fonts like Courier New are fixed-width: every character
takes up the same amount of space. But fonts like Times New Roman (the default font
for most word processing programs) and Arial have varying width according to the
character: an “i” takes up less space than a “w” and so forth. This variance in space
creates the same broken effect as the line length problem.
Keep your messages in a fixed-width font (10-point size is best in nearly every case) and
make sure each line is 60 to 65 characters long. When you reach the limit, use a hard
return to start the next line rather than allowing your word processing program to wrap
the text. If you’re using Microsoft Word to compose your messages, there is a counter at
the bottom of the window that tells you what line and character number you’re on as
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