My biggest email embarrassment? Spelling my own name wrong in a message to a senior official. A friend of mine forwarded an email, forgetting that the recipient was the topic of a catty discussion further down the included chain. A coworker sent a personal email to the all-staff distribution list, reaching over 20,000 suddenly disgruntled employees, who hit reply all to vent their frustration and overwhelmed the mail server.

David Shipley, deputy editorial page editor and op-ed page editor of the New York Times, and Will Schwalbe, senior vice-president and editor-in-chief of Hyperion Books, want to help us all avoid those kinds of email embarrassments and disasters. Their book Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home starts with an example that makes mine trivial — a chain of emails from Michael Brown, director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during Hurricane Katrina, containing frivolous attempted witticisms about his unfashionable FEMA attire, for example, during the worst days of the disaster.

Most of the book focuses on how not to look like an idiot or do harm to relationships in business dealings, but Send also advises us on how not to get fired or land in jail. Even though the worst case scenarios may seem alarmist, reading them might just make you think twice before sending. As the recipient of far too many vague, unintentionally rude, unwisely hotheaded, and unnecessary emails in a day, and the sender of at least a few, I know you'll be doing yourself and your recipients a huge favour by listening to Shipley and Schwalbe.

They cover when to email and when to pick up the phone or a pen or nothing at all; consciously thinking about each element of an email — subject line, cc field, attachments, etc. — in order to make the most out of an email exchange; writing the perfect email for the type of message you want to convey; and how to avoid harm or even jail. The book summarizes it all in a simple acronym: Simple, Effective, Necessary, Done. SEND.

None of this is rocket science, and could in fact be dismissed as common sense if it weren't for the fact that so many of the senseless acts of email they describe are so common in the real world.

The companion website at ThinkBeforeYouSend continues the tips and expands the conversation to let readers share their email horror stories.

With an abundance of information already out there on email etiquette, Send is saved by its humour, breadth and efficiency, and the reputation of the authors. Before ISPs give their customers an email address, before companies give their employees an email account, they should first give Send to spare a lot of pain and aggravation to senders and receivers alike.

For more information and to listen to an audio clip, visit the Random House Canada site.