I don't know about you but I rely heavily on technology to keep in touch with others. Texting, e-mailing, blogging and writing on Hubpages are all avenues I enjoy using. I find sending out e-mails to friends and family is a great way to reach a large number of people with one source; an interesting, fun or informative message that the recipient will benefit from in some way.

Over the many years I've both sent and received messages, one thing has become apparent to me. If you want people to actually read your message, make it simple and easy to read! Nothing annoys me more than receiving an e-mail message that has been forwarded 20 times. You have to click through numerous messages just to get to the original one. I tend to get frustrated and give up thus not reading the information sent at all.

Below are my tips that I've used when forwarding on an e-mail message that I want to ensure has a better chance of being read than deleted. Of course, I am no expert, just an average "Joe" (well, 39 year old, stay at home mom) but I think these are useful:

1. Start with the original message: Instead of hitting forward from the message you received from the person you know, find the original message with the content you want to send. This eliminates your recipients having to click through all those messages you did to see the content of the message.
2. Clean up the content: Usually when I get to the original message, it has been forwarded so many times there is other forwarding information visible. Such as, at the bottom, there is information on anti-virus protection software or advertisements for service providers (such as AOL, etc.) Go through and delete the unnecessary information. It makes the message cleaner and more appealing to the reader.
3. Delete the forwarding information from the subject title: Take a couple seconds to remove the words or abbreviations such as FW:, FWD:, RE: from the subject line of your e-mail. Again your recipient will be more interested in reading your message if they know it isn't yet another forwarded message that they will have to click through to get to the content.
4. Write something in the subject line: Almost as much of a deterrent as the word or abbreviations for forwards are, so is nothing at all! I want to know what I am opening up and about to read. If there isn't any information provided I may just delete it all together.
5. Send to addresses as a BCC:Another thing that I find annoying is when I receive an e-mail from someone that is also addressed to other people in their address book (a normal occurrence) and then one of those other recipients reply, they hit "Reply All" button instead of just "Reply" and I get their response to the original message that maybe I didn't want or need to see. Eliminate this by sending it to your addresses as a BCC (blind carbon copy). Then when the recipients hit reply the message will only go to the author or specific people they choose to send it to. You can also use the "Undisclosed recipients" option. In the "To" option, send it to yourself so you know your message went through.

Hope these tips help you and help your friends, family & colleagues enjoy your forwarded e-mails!