Professional-looking email address format

[luca_linux]

Hi everyone,
I would like to know which is the best and most "professional-looking" format for email addresses in your opinion and why you think so.

Here are a few examples (for a hypothetical John Doe):

johndoe@domain.com

john.doe@domain.com

jdoe@domain.com

j.doe@domain.com

johnd@domain.com

john.d@domain.com

doej@domain.com

doe.j@domain.com

Other formats not in the list are welcome as well.



Thank you. :)

[kevin11951]

Hi everyone,
I would like to know which is the best and most "professional-looking" format for email addresses in your opinion and why you think so.

Here are a few examples (for a hypothetical John Doe):

johndoe@domain.com

john.doe@domain.com

jdoe@domain.com

j.doe@domain.com

johnd@domain.com

john.d@domain.com

doej@domain.com

doe.j@domain.com

Other formats not in the list are welcome as well.



Thank you. :)

for me it would be jdoe@domain.com, thats the best IMO.

[grazed]

for me it would be jdoe@domain.com, thats the best IMO.

agreed. everywhere I have worked, including my school, uses this format.

[Dr Small]

for me it would be jdoe@domain.com, thats the best IMO.
But what happens if John and Janice Doe work at the same company, or John and Joe?

[Giant Speck]

I personally like the j.doe@domain.com format. It separates the first initial from the last name, but in an attractive and not distracting way.

[Icehuck]

john.doe@domain.com


Every large company I have ever dealt with and the company I work for now does it this way. You don't want your customers getting confused on who they are sending email to. Especially when you have names like jdoe1@domain.com and jdoe11@domain.com

[getaboat]

john.doe@domain.com


Every large company I have ever dealt with and the company I work for now does it this way. You don't want your customers getting confused on who they are sending email to. Especially when you have names like jdoe1@domain.com and jdoe11@domain.com

spot on.

[pp.]

john.doe@domain.com is one of the more usual formats. My own private address is joe@doe.com

Some people look somewhat startled, though, when I tell it.

[klange]

I utterly despise the new convention of First.Last@. I myself prefer FLast@, but I've also used LastF@
@Dr Small: Conventions vary when using FLast and LastF: I've seen everything from second letter of first name (FiLast/LastFi) to middle initial (FMLast/LastFM).

First.Last is redundant as a full name string is usually prepended in the From address, ie all of my messages are sent from "Kevin Lange <******@oasis-games.com>". It also destroys any sense of safety-through-obscurity, if they have your name they have your email address and this is not always a good thing. Beyond that, how do you handle employees/users with really long names? I don't really want to have to send mail to Vijayalakshmi.Balasubramanian@domain.tld (that's a real name of some random doctor at a local hospital). vbalas@domain.tld is much nicer.

@Giant Speck: You must not do much with monospaced fonts and documents. A dot is even more annoying than an underscore: when it's not leaving a massive gap, it can be difficult to see. The dot is also tacky. There's already one dot in the domain, why add another one?

[kevin11951]

I utterly despise the new convention of First.Last@. I myself prefer FLast@, but I've also used LastF@
@Dr Small: Conventions vary when using FLast and LastF: I've seen everything from second letter of first name (FiLast/LastFi) to middle initial (FMLast/LastFM).

First.Last is redundant as a full name string is usually prepended in the From address, ie all of my messages are sent from "Kevin Lange <******@oasis-games.com>". It also destroys any sense of safety-through-obscurity, if they have your name they have your email address and this is not always a good thing. Beyond that, how do you handle employees/users with really long names? I don't really want to have to send mail to Vijayalakshmi.Balasubramanian@domain.tld (that's a real name of some random doctor at a local hospital). vbalas@domain.tld is much nicer.

@Giant Speck: You must not do much with monospaced fonts and documents. A dot is even more annoying than an underscore: when it's not leaving a massive gap, it can be difficult to see. The dot is also tacky. There's already one dot in the domain, why add another one?

you sound very well versed on the subject of email addresses... :)

[pp.]

First.Last is redundant as a full name string is usually prepended in the From address, ie all of my messages are sent from "Kevin Lange <******@oasis-games.com>". It also destroys any sense of safety-through-obscurity, if they have your name they have your email address and this is not always a good thing.

The "from" field may or may not be present in a mail. When I type the address of someone whose name I know or when I use a mailto URL, there's no "from" field present.

It is customary to know the names of people you regularly do business with. It is also to the advantage of both parties if they can reach each other without having exchanged credentials or contact information beforehand.

In the context of this thread the first.last@domain.top is one of the more commonly used and one of the more useful formats.

And there's only one dot in the domain name.

[laurielegit]

Companies I have know/worked for used the following:

First.Last@company.com
F.Last@company.com

One company used the first four letters of last name then the first letter of first name then a 3 digit number. E.G. Laurence Clark became Clarl009. Another let the employees use their middle names as well as first names for initials. E.G. Laurence Thomas Clark became LT.Clark.

I favour First.Last@Company.com personally, but it is up to you

[Polygon]

i think some combination of first and last name should work

there is a hilarious dilbert comic about the dangers of using first name letter , last name. i cant find it at the moment though =/

[brunovecchi]

The coolest looking adress is

john@doe.com

[Sporkman]

chunkylover62@hotmail.com

[-grubby]

I like John.doe@domain.com

[gletob]

personally for a business email I prefer

John_Doe@Domain.net

[Luke has no name]

I utterly despise the new convention of First.Last@.

First.Last is redundant as a full name string is usually prepended in the From address, ie all of my messages are sent from "Kevin Lange <******@oasis-games.com>". It also destroys any sense of safety-through-obscurity, if they have your name they have your email address and this is not always a good thing.

@Giant Speck: You must not do much with monospaced fonts and documents. A dot is even more annoying than an underscore: when it's not leaving a massive gap, it can be difficult to see. The dot is also tacky. There's already one dot in the domain, why add another one?

I have an email address first.last@gmail.com (my first name is in fact Luke). I also have lukehasnoname@gmail.com, an email for me online shopping, an email for all 'questionable' websites', an email for my school, and an email no one knows about, for pranks and such. They all conglomerate under lukehasnoname@.

[luca_linux]

Following most of your advice, I narrowed down to jdoe@domain.com and john.doe@domain.com, which both seem to be the most common and most frequently used within corporations.
I have to admit the fact that no one pointed out the johndoe@domain.com format (without the period ".") kind of surprised me, because I can actually recall of having seen it somewhere. I guess the lack of separation between the first and last name is the main issue of this format, isn't it?
If anyone has something else to suggest, please post.
Thank you all for replying. :)

[Vadi]

john.doe@domain.com

[pp.]

the fact that no one pointed out the johndoe@domain.com format (without the period ".") kind of surprised me

johndoe without any separators would be a poor choice and - presumably - look somewhat unprofessional. Most of us are familiar with "john" and can parse that simple name without difficulty. What about heribertvonkaenel@silly.org? Also, in larger organisations its easy to produce 'collisions' that way which are hard to spot.

I have observed, however, corporations which used underscores instead of a period in the recipient's name: john_doe. Still, that's a bit unusual and may contribute to a number of mails dropped or misdirected by the mail system.

[geoken]

First.Last is redundant as a full name string is usually prepended in the From address, ie all of my messages are sent from "Kevin Lange <******@oasis-games.com>".

It's not redundant because it's serves a completely different purpose from the name string. The name string is completely irrelevant to my ability to easily remember an email address.

[Swarms]

Sorry for hijacking topic for a minute.
I am thinking about registering my full name as a .com domain, and then having mail@myname.com as a mail address. Any thoughts before I register?

[pp.]

I am thinking about registering my full name as a .com domain, and then having mail@myname.com as a mail address. Any thoughts before I register?

That's what I've done, except it wasn't in .com but in the TLD of my home country. It's always good for some raised eyebrows and other expressions of astonishment. But then, my name isn't Smith.

[Swarms]

Thanks, just about to register.
My forename contains an ø, so I have to rewrite that to oe though. :(

[luca_linux]

Eventually I used the FLast format (jdoe@domain.com), even though it has been a tough decision to make, because john.doe@domain.com looked very good too, as some of you had pointed out.
Obviously, any other comments are welcome.
Thank you all for your feedback. :)

[Joeb454]

I'm not really of any opinion on this subject, due to the sheer amount of similar a names a company may have at any given time :)

Personally I think I have too many email addresses (*@joeb454.co.uk, *@gmail.com, *@ubuntu.com, *@my-university.ac.uk) ;) but with each domain, I'm happy with the prefix, it suits it :)