E-mail is an impersonal medium that allows a person to send quick and sometimes harsh messages they wouldn t consider delivering in person. If you have a criticism, deliver it in person. If it s not worth saying in person, it s not worth saying at all. Then, as long as the recipient knows the meaning of the asterisk, they won't have to waste time opening that message. Your recipient can simply glance at the Inbox, read the subject line, and then delete the message.
Plain text is best.
There are lots of e-mail clients that cannot handle messages with a lot of formatting. The message will come in as utter gibberish or in the worst case, crash the e-mail client. Abbreviation usage is quite common with e-mail. In the quest to save keystrokes, users have created their own shorthand. Some of the more common abbreviations are listed below.