Being one of the largest clubs in the country, we receive hundreds of emails every week. Parents, fencers, coaches, and the club all need to talk about billing, scheduling, health, training plans, competitions, logistics, equipment, and a hundred other things. With that much email flying around, how well we communicate matters just as much as what we’re communicating about.

Email etiquette is a trivial topic, I know. But after years of running the club, I decided it was worth writing down. Not just for our families, but for any fencing club dealing with the same flood of email.

No club puts “We want to suck at communication” on their website. Every club wants to be fast and clear with parents and fencers. But even the best communication breaks down when the basic rules of email get ignored. So here are fourteen rules that will make the whole system work better, for you and for us.

1. Use a clear subject line. If I could make just one point, this would be it. State exactly what the email is about. My favorite format is “Fencer’s First/Last Name: Subject.” For example: “John Smith: Absence August 1-14 due to vacation.”

2. Never hijack a mass email with a personal issue. If your coach sends a group email about an upcoming competition, don’t reply to that thread with an unrelated personal matter just to save yourself typing an address. At minimum, change the subject line so your message doesn’t get buried in a thread nobody is watching anymore.

3. Always identify your fencer in the body of the email. The best approach: “This is regarding my son John Smith (2016).” Adding the birth year matters, especially when a coach has multiple students with the same name. There’s also a hidden benefit: it’s a constant reminder of your child’s age category. We know it by heart, but we’re human, and with the season switches, mistakes happen.

4. One fencer, one topic, per email. If you have questions about two different kids, or two unrelated issues, send two emails. Bundling everything into one message makes it easy for something to get missed when we’re triaging a full inbox fast.

5. Don’t assume your email address means anything to us. “Happymomofsweetfencer@gmail.com” tells you exactly who it is. To the club, it’s just a string of characters. This is exactly why rules 1 through 4 matter.

Now for the etiquette side of things, the habits that keep a busy inbox from turning into a mess for everyone.

6. Check before you ask again. Assume the club sends a lot of email. If we already sent the information, look for it in your inbox first, and check spam or promotions too. A lot of “we never heard back” turns out to be a message that landed somewhere nobody thought to look. Checking first saves everyone time and keeps communication from getting overloaded with repeat requests.

7. Skip the empty reply on mass emails. Unless we specifically ask for a response, don’t reply with “thumbs up” or “got it.” Email is not social media. Nobody is counting likes, and a reply with zero content still adds to the thread, which can bury something important that comes later.

8. Avoid unnecessary CCs. Unless every person on that list truly needs to see the message, keep it small. If you send one email to four people, all four may end up working on a reply, when one response would have answered your question just as well. That’s four people’s time spent for the same result.

9. Be patient. Clubs and coaches travel to competitions constantly. When we’re on the road, response time slows down. If it’s not urgent, give it a little time, or wait until the competition is over. 

10. If it’s urgent or sensitive, call instead of emailing. An injury, a same-day urgent issue, or anything emotionally loaded is better handled by phone. It skips the back-and-forth and keeps tone from getting misread in a text-only message.

11. Create a folder system for fencing email. One main folder, with subfolders for Club, USA Fencing, Tournaments, and Travel. The club holds communication from us. USA Fencing sends its own important updates. Tournaments cover organizer communication. Travel holds tickets and hotel confirmations. Clean these out periodically so they don’t pile up.

12. When following up on something discussed earlier, reference the original email. Include the subject line and the date it was sent. This gets everyone on the same page immediately instead of trying to reconstruct a conversation from memory.

13. When in doubt, keep it simple and specific. The shorter and clearer the email, the faster the answer. A long email covering five topics at once almost always gets a slower response than a short one asking a single clear question.

14. Give full context, don’t make us guess. Instead of “I accidentally deleted my private lesson, please restore it,” write “Please schedule a lesson with Coach Jack Sparrow next Tuesday at 5pm, I accidentally deleted it.” The first version sends us searching through logs to reconstruct what happened. The second one lets us fix it in ten seconds.

None of these rules are complicated. But together, they’re the difference between a club that feels chaotic and one that feels organized. Good communication isn’t just about speed. It’s about making sure the right message reaches the right person, gets read, and doesn’t get lost in the noise. A few small habits on your end go a long way toward making sure nothing important slips through the cracks, for you or for us.

If I missed some good tip, please share it in the comments.