It is far too easy to click Send and fire away that email you may come to regret. Lacking the moderating effect of your voice, eye contact, facial expression and body language, your email may come across as rude if you don’t watch it. Here are seven suggestions on email etiquette. More suggestions are waiting for you, for example advice on how to avoid a court case, if you sign up for the online course.
1. Get to the point
Get to the point immediately, be it a request, a query or a response. Unless the recipient does not know you and needs an introduction, don’t start by explaining the background to why you are writing this email. Make your point, using the subject field for an eye-catching headline and following up in the body of the email. Provide more detail in a second and possibly third sentence.
2. Keep it short
Do not make an email longer than it needs to be. Remember that absorbing an email is harder than reading an attached Word document or from paper. Use short paragraphs and blank lines between each paragraph. Try to keep your sentences to a maximum of 20 words. When making points, number them or mark them with bullets to keep the overview. Email is meant to be a quick medium and requires a different kind of writing from letters. If you need to elaborate, attach a document.
3. Use proper spelling, grammar and punctuation
Improper spelling, grammar and punctuation give a bad impression of your company and yourself. Also, emails with no full stops or commas are difficult to read and can even change the meaning of the text. Think: Eats, shoots and leaves. Heard of that one? The panda eats shoots and leaves. That is her diet. She does not have a meal, open fire and run away. The comma makes all the difference in this case.
4. Pick up the phone
We have all encountered the situation where we are lost for words trying to explain a sensitive issue in writing. Either go for a walk before returning to craft your email or, best of all, call the person and explain what it is all about.
5. Do not overuse the high-priority option
We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf. If you overuse the high-priority option, it will lose its function when you really need it. Moreover, even if an email has high priority, your message will come across as slightly aggressive if you flag it as 'high priority'. Only use the high-priority option if it is truly called for.
6. Don’t write or reply to an email when you are exhausted or angry
A text hits the reader without the moderating effect that you can provide through eye contact, voice or body language. Best pick up the phone, ask for a meeting or email back to say you will reply later.
7. Read the email before you send it – accuracy counts
Whatever you do, take a few moments to read your email before hitting the Send button. A lot of people don't bother to do this, as can be seen from the many spelling and grammar mistakes contained in emails.