I get email from many readers, which is marvellous because it can make my day.

"You are a tonic!" I tell those people. It's embarrassing to talk like Granny on The Beverley Hillbillies but sometimes people are so good and so funny that there's no other way to phrase it.

They send me jpegs of my high school being demolished. I loved my high school and grieve its destruction, but there's something disturbed in me that revels in that exquisite feeling of loss.

Or they tell me that my favourite bar, in which I spent years of my life, is now a dollar store. This is true, I drove by last week.

Or they tell me about their lives. They live in North Bay, imagine that. And I go off into a reverie of having had an entirely different life, of having put down roots in a place like North Bay myself, had a family and a lucrative career selling hardware or maybe insurance.

I could have been a big fish in a small pond, a sturdy sort, becoming mayor maybe, palling with the Chamber of Commerce about making the North a better place to live.

I do so know snow

Idle dreams, and of course in real life the dream would end up like an Alice Munro short story, in particular one called Fits. That story, about nice people in a nice town, makes your blood run cold, which is literally what happens in the story. Fits is about the unknowability of people.

As I say, people email me. But a year ago I began to find that more people reached me on Facebook (which I dislike) than on my website or through my private email addresses.

The more reachable I became, the less I reached back to my emailers until finally I pretty much stopped.

I also stopped reading online comments soon after I began writing online. I tell you, only a fool would read what commenters post on the Guardian website. Especially after my saying last week that Britain was coping poorly with its wee bit of flurries.

They even questioned my knowledge of snow. Me, a Canadian.

What reaches me has already been filtered at least twice, by technology and other humans. If other people are doing this, and they are, it means that the internet has failed in at least one important way. We are as distant from our fellow humans as we ever were.

My email etiquette

These barriers make me sad. So here's some practical advice for people who want their emails to reach the person they're destined for and perhaps be responded to.

1. Don't be a Literal. These are people who always get the wrong end of the stick because they, well, take everything literally. These are the people who didn't celebrate the millennium at midnight on 2000 because technically it wouldn't arrive till 2001. They objected when I said Michelle Obama came with a green silk ribbon tied at her breast, gift-wrapped like a present to the nation.

Literal feminists wrote to say I was being sexist. I responded with a brief explanation of a metaphor.

Germaine Greer (whom I detest, not that it's relevant) once wrote about buying reconstituted orange juice in Ottawa. She went on to New York City and was put up in a gorgeous suite of such luxury that it made her head spin. She thought of the minions who slaved to keep guests like her in such comfort and said she'd rather have "dreary" Ottawa than New York with its freshly squeezed orange juice at the ring of a bell.

What response did she get to this declaration of humanity? Yep, she got complaints from furious Canadian Literals, saying you can too buy fresh-squeezed OJ in Ottawa!

2. Don't use expletives. You can catch more flies with honey than with cursing. I have learned this from writing my own ill-judged sweary emails.

To "Louise" who writes to me each week abusing my words and deploring my continued existence on the planet, followed by "Why don't you ever write back to me?" I can only say that I'd appreciate a little charm, a little social flexibility. Work with me, Louise.

3. Don't ask personal questions. I will tell you where to stay in Paris and that the Galeries Lafayette fashion emporium is a waste of time. Also, how to get rid of moths, what books to read and how to get candle wax off the carpet.

But if you want private information, go to the discussion forums on Craigslist or search for speed-dating and the Ashley Madison agency where you will find women who want to meet strangers who are strange. I don't and I won't read your email.

4. I don't do three-ways. You know who you are.

5. Don't send sex videos online. This will always be taken the wrong way. Trust me, I will forward the thing to your daughter.

6. If you object to something you read online, give it one more read to make sure you read it right.

To the concerned readers who recently accused me of shredding and burning books, yes, it would be a good idea to give unwanted books to old folks' homes. But I am taken aback by the assumption that a book is a book is a book. Some books are good; some are bloody awful. I doubt the elderly want my battered copies of Where's Waldo? or Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul.

7. Sometimes I am joking. When I said that alcoholics had messy kitchens, I did not mean all alcoholics. Some alcoholics are doubtless impeccable in their food preparation area habits. I apologize to some alcoholics.

8. Never email drunk. I used to worry that educational standards were dropping, judging by the spelling on website forums, but now I think it's just the liquor.

People who can construct a sentence at noon are writing gibberish at midnight.

9. Build a full, rich life for yourself. Get away from that computer. Go for a walk. Make something of yourself.

Yes, of course I am referring to me.