I know what you are thinking! you are probably thinking that who doesn’t know how to write a simple email, check this out you may be surprised on how you have defaulted on these simple Dos and Don’ts on writing professional email.
Subject: do not send email without a subject and when you do, make sure the subject is actually the subject of the email. Do not have your subject as “for grabs” or” Important” state what exactly is up for grabs or what is Important for example “Friday meeting rescheduled” . Personally and many other people, read their emails by subject. This is no news, it’s because the inbox shows emails by sender and subject. From the subject, one judges whether to read the email now or later or even never.
Introduce yourself: if it is the first time you are emailing someone, state who you are and what you do and why you are writing. These should be in the first paragraph of your email. If you are replying an email then Include the original message that way the receiver can put you into context. Most people have so many emails to read a day , so they have to prioritise so be as clear as possible if you want your email read.
Keep it short and simple: people don’t want to read long emails. Sometime someone can receive over 30 emails a day If your email is not short simple and clear, It will hardly get the attention it deserves. If you have too much to write Package it as an attachment and remember to name you attachment in line with content or add links to websites were the information could be found.
Please be polite. now, if you are angry with a colleague, even if it is you subordinate, never inform them through email. Some things are better done in person than in writing. when you approach one in person, the conflict is momentary. Angry mail kind of leaves a trail of the conflict for a long time. Imagine it forwarded or published. It can even be used as evidence against you in an employee harassment suit. Learn to use words like please and thank you these magic words have a way of making people do things easily and smoothly.
Email is no text message. if you want to be taken seriously, do not write your email as If you are writing a text message. Avoid slang, acronyms and abbreviations as necessary as possible. For example using Ur for you’re in a professional email. Also, always spell check your email, don’t use only the computer spell check, read through you will be able to catch those words that a correctly spelt but are out of context. It helps some times to have someone else proof read for you.
Email accounts: every time I receive email from someone like” hotMcsteamy@ gmail.com” I lose sense of what they are saying before I even start reading. This outcry goes especially to people who have just left campus or still at campus applying for an Internship or jobs. It’s a advisable to always use you names as you email user name like sandrajohns@gmail.com. If you company has accounts configured to its domain like “rhona@the360network.com “It advisable to always send all the work mail using this account. It not only helps with branding it also give the email an authentic sense.
Be care full on that reply all button: every time you are replying email please verify if it is to the intended receivers. Trust me ,you don’t want to be sending wrong email to the wrong persons this could put you in a lot of trouble .More to this mistake is don’t forward a” bbc” there has got to be reason why it was a blind copy in the first place when you forward it, the new receiver sees whoever was copied in that email.
Better in person than email: if you are trying to express the seriousness of a situation it is better done in person than in email. For example asking for a salary increment, or firing an employee and other of sort issues. Like I said before, you don’t know where this email can be forwarded to. It’s always advisable to send email setting up an appointment for such delicate issues.
Always write you email in sentence case: by this I mean follow the grammatical rules of capitalising nouns of place and persons and beginning of sentences. Don’t get tempted to write an email in capital letters even if you are trying to emphasize something not even for the subject. An email in all caps feels like someone is screaming at you. it advisable to use colours, italics, bolding or underlines to create emphasis in email than all caps.
Add a signature block: The signature block entail; your names, phone number and email address, along with other contact details if required, such as URLs for sites owned by your company. This has the effect of “signing off” the message and in a reply message it indicates that no more information follows. This gives the receiver detail of where to find more information if needed.
- If you know any more Tips or things that annoy you in the emails you receive , please share it in the comment section. Thank you.
