Telegraph.co.uk

Monday 20 February 2017

Advertisement

Netiquette: Debrett's guide to Twitter and Facebook

Debrett's has published a guide to etiquette on social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, in an attempt to help people remain civil online.

Don't tweet when drunk, Debrett's says
Don't tweet when drunk, Debrett's says Photo: Jonathan Hordle/Rex Features

Posting messages when sober and attempting to stick to the rules of English grammar are the most important things to remember, the publisher says, in its light-hearted attempt to help people get to grips with the fast-moving and often complex world of social networking.

The rise of social networking has enabled millions of people to communicate with each other quicker than ever before, but sometimes politeness, clarity and measured thoughts get lost in the rush to instant message or send a tweet in fewer than 140 characters, it points out.

It points out that some celebrities such as Charlie Sheen and Courtney Love set a poor example with their often incomprehensible, or even libellous, ramblings. Last month Ms Love paid £240,000 to a fashion designer to settle a legal dispute over an allegedly libellous comment the singer had posted on Twitter.

In the guide, developed with Sky Broadband, it warns users that potential or current employers often check their workers' social networking pages, so it is imperative that angry disputes are kept offline or private.

Lastly, it appeals to Facebookers and Tweeters not to forget the simple beauty of putting pen to paper and occasionally writing a good old-fashioned letter. "You do remember how, don’t you?", it says rather forlornly.

These are its tips for Tweeters:

1. Avoid causing fear and chaos by wording your tweets correctly: a wrongly worded tweet caused panic about a gunman on London’s Oxford Street recently. In fact, the tweet referred to a harmless photo shoot.

2. Do not overload the Facebook home page feed with countless status updates. Be sure that your posts are written to enlighten others, and not used as an exercise in vanity.

3. Do not use social media under the influence. Mr Charlie Sheen may not have such qualms, but few are the letters, conversations or electronic correspondence that are more lucid when intoxicated.

4. Do not vent online. And take particular care if your personal Twitter account is also utilised for work purposes – tantrums on Twitter rarely resolve disputes with colleagues, customers or clients. Ms Courtney Love’s aggressive Twitter rants at her fashion designer cost her impressive £264,000 in lawsuit costs. It would have been more prudent to have bought a bar of soap to wash her mouth out.

5. Do refrain from airing your dirty laundry in public and keep your spats off the web. Although it may help you get column inches if you’re promoting a TV show or a new album.

6. Do not bombard your various social media outlets with lots of pictures, updates and blogs all at once – sharing is not always caring.

7. Most importantly, ensure your personal profile across all form of social media reflects yourself in the way you desire. We have to ask again. Are you listening Courtney Love?

8. Do not let spelling and grammar fly out the window. 140 characters is not an excuse to be sloppppy [sic]

9. Be selective in accepting invitations on business networks such as LinkedIn. This is your professional network – a revealing black book of people whom you believe to be valued contacts. Consider that many recruitment officers will search and invite contacts en masse.

10. And lastly, make sure you use other forms of communication once in a while. Pick up the phone, meet face-to-face, or even write a good, old-fashioned letter. You do remember how, don’t you?

Read more from Telegraph Technology

How we moderate
telegraphuk
blog comments powered by Disqus
Advertisement

offers from amazon

Advertisement
Advertisement

More from the web

Technology choice

More from the web

Back to top

© Copyright of Telegraph Media Group Limited 2017

Terms and Conditions

Today's News

Archive

Style Book

Weather Forecast
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8434855/Netiquette-Debretts-guide-to-Twitter-and-Facebook.html
www.telegraph.co.uk
crawl=CC-MAIN-2017-09
139873
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:MOJKWN6FW3XKLIABRGV5UB7AC2GVF4BF
<urn:uuid:07fa781a-edf8-4f3f-840e-c269ce6630e1>
2017-02-20T07:20:14Z
23.50.225.10
sha1:4NOAK6ALVS2A7HQAGGO47DNPYRV35C3P
<urn:uuid:b221b9c9-f906-4cce-9f8c-f68a48d08c96>
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/twitter/8434855/Netiquette-Debretts-guide-to-Twitter-and-Facebook.html
response
<urn:uuid:d5f478c4-e227-4d20-82cf-34aed28b8169>
robots: classic
hostname: ip-10-171-10-108.ec2.internal
software: Nutch 1.6 (CC)/CC WarcExport 1.0
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2017-09
operator: CommonCrawl Admin
description: Wide crawl of the web for February 2017
publisher: CommonCrawl
format: WARC File Format 1.0
conformsTo: http://bibnum.bnf.fr/WARC/WARC_ISO_28500_version1_latestdraft.pdf