When is it impolite to use Reply instead of Reply All? [closed]

Question

I am looking for specific scenarios that is considered common practice or have caused problems in the past when you simply Reply to the sender rather than doing a Reply All to people that were included in the 'cc chain'. There is a perception that people use cc emails to put pressure on people to take more action or include relevant people in the discussion, but if someone does this and your reply is only to them specifically will this cause some other 'political' issue(s)?

The question is, in the situation when someone deliberately cc other people (higher up the management hierarchy), would it be considered impolite if you simply just replied to the person (for example a quick yes or no), and will other people in the chain find it okay that they were not included? Does this make any difference if this person is ranked higher/equal/lower than you in the organization?

Answer 1

It depends on why people are getting cc'd.

If the original sender is cc-ing people in order to escalate an issue, failing to include them on the reply is only going to create more work for you and more frustration for the people on the cc list. If someone is cc-ing your manager, for example, and you just reply directly, then as far as your manager is aware, someone escalated an issue and you haven't done anything about it. That means that your manager has to follow up with you to find out what's going on. And then your manager potentially has to communicate that status to other people that were on the original email. That's a lot of extra work for your manager to do that you could have eliminated with a Reply All.

Of course, there are other times where doing a Reply All would be rude. If people were cc'd because it was a wide distribution (a corporate announcement, for example), replying to everyone will make be a mistake.