What is the etiquette of the digital age? And what are regarded as good manners in cyberspace?

A survey of office workers across the UK was designed to help businesses formulate guidelines on what is, and what is not, acceptable in the world of modern communications.

The survey, undertaken by Telewest Business, the business communications provider, suggested that nearly half of UK office workers would consider it rude not to have received a reply to an e-mail within a morning.

And five per cent of people would consider it rude if they had not received an e-mail response within five minutes of sending theirs. The survey claims that two out of every five people would expect a response to a text message within an hour before considering it rude, and nearly a quarter of the people questioned expected a response within five minutes to an instant message.

Stephen Beynon, managing director of Telewest Business, said: "The British are renowned for their manners, so it is important that as and when these tools become more widely known, businesses give guidelines to their staff on how to use them efficiently.

"If businesses fail to tackle this head-on, they risk damaging relationships with suppliers, partners and clients alike."

The survey found that e-mail was the most highly regarded tool in the office, with 78 per cent of the respondents claiming they could not live without it in the workplace.

Nearly a third of the respondents said they still used fax and letters every day.

* The study, called Digital Etiquette, was carried out by the research company TNS, which surveyed more than 1,400 office workers, across the UK in January on behalf of Telewest Business.