Email Etiquette

Email has grown in popularity in the past few years and has now become one of the main forms of communication in society. In the beginning days of email people did it more for fun and were trying to get familiar with the new craze. But over the last few years as people have gotten familiar with email, it has become more professional and there are some rules of etiquette that people should follow. It gets annoying when people don't respond to your emails for a really long time because at that point you don't remember or don't care about what is being asked, or when you are trying to send a professional document and the people you are sending it to haven't updated their software for seven years and are using a program version that can't format the document. Yes that could be the senders fault because they should use a more common format, but isn't staying up to date professional too, especially in a technology-driven society?
Although there are many professional rules to email I think on a more personal level these rules can be set aside so that one may have fun while emailing. With friends and family use fun emoticons and your little acronyms such as lol so that you can portray a little more personality. Just remember there is a time and a place for everything and that definitely applies to email as well. Always think of who you are emailing and the significance of the person and issue being discussed.