Tips for writing email
By Jin Nan Goto
Today a great deal of communication takes place by email, but a surprising number of people are really bad at writing email. Most mistakes are overlooked when sending emails out to friends and family, but when you send email to coworkers, clients, and you employer (bosses) you need to convey a sense a professionalism. Here are some dos and do nots for writing email.
Do Not:
- Do Not, under any circumstances, compose your entire email using all capital letters. All Caps is a way to convey shouting and should be avoided. Often people capitalize words they want to EMPHASIZE, but it’s not acceptable in many situations. If you can, bold any words you wish to emphasize (can only do this if your email client accepts Rich Text).
- Do not use a lot of Abbreviations. Besides the fact that the recipient may not understand your message, abbreviated words reflect poorly on your (and/or your company’s ) professionalism. You should instead take time and spell out words completely. Emoticons :-) should also be avoided.
- Do not go overboard with the goofy fonts and colors. Just because you can change the color of every third word doesn’t mean that you should. excessive use of colors and fonts tend to distract from the message.
- Do not use “web beacons” to track the receipt of email. Many users utilize third party services that will notify you when someone opens your email message. Often this is a transparent one pixel image that tracks the user as the image is being loaded. This is often done without the knowledge of the user opening the message. It is a favorite tool of spammers and is a huge privacy issue. There are other less invasive, although more annoying, ways of finding out if your message was read.
- Do not send any attachments unless you know the recipient and they are expecting an attachment. Because of the threat of malware in email attachments, most users will not open them. Try sending as much as you can in the body of the email. If you need to send an invoice to a client, type it in the body of the email rather than on a Word document or a PDF. If you need to send something as an attachment make sure that the recipient knows that you are sending it, and know what it is.
Dos:
- Check your spelling and grammar. Reread your email and make sure that it makes sense and that it says what you mean. Spending a little time looking after the little things can really add a lot to your email.
- Use a neutral tone. Joking and sarcasm does not translate well in the written word, and avoiding those devices helps eliminate a lot of misunderstandings.
- Use the Cc field when sending copies of the email to others rather than placing all the addresses in the To field. Also make it clear to whom you are writing to. That way there is no confusion over who needs to respond to the email.
- Be clear and concise. Try and place the most important information in the first paragraph and all the extra details in the subsequent paragraphs. That way people do not need to read a long rambling email before they can get to the important information.
- Close your email and talk to the person on the phone or face to face (if possible) whenever it is appropriate rather than sending emails. Emails can be very impersonal and if you always stick to writing email you may miss out on opportunities to get to know your coworkers. This is especially important (although very difficult to do) if you telecommute or work from home.
References:
http://careerplanning.about.com/od/communication/a/email_etiquette.htm
http://iwillfollow.com/email.htm
http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/HA012054101033.aspx
