I normally avoid lists of writing Do’s and Don’ts because they’re overly simplistic, but I thought this list in the introduction to Email English (2nd Ed., Paul Emmerson) included some good advice.
I’ve added additional advice and comments below each of the tips.
What advice would you add? What do you always/never do in emails? What do you wish others would or wouldn’t do?
Here are Emmerson’s tips for writing good emails (from the book Email English):
- Use a ‘subject line that summarizes the content of the message. You want people to find your email in their folders later. So ‘From John’ is not a good subject line.
- Steph’s extra advice: Never reply to an email with your answer in the subject line. An email with no body can be confusing for the reader and doesn’t work well in threaded conversations. Even if you’re just sending a quick reply, include a subject and a message in the body. Emails are NOT texts or instant messages.
- Steph’s extra advice: Never reply to an email with your answer in the subject line. An email with no body can be confusing for the reader and doesn’t work well in threaded conversations. Even if you’re just sending a quick reply, include a subject and a message in the body. Emails are NOT texts or instant messages.
- Use short, simple sentences. The most common mistake for learners of English is to translate directly from their own language. Usually, the result is a complicated, confusing sentence.
- Steph’s extra advice: The same is true for native speakers of English. Keep it simple! And, keep your audience in mind. If you’re writing to people whose first language isn’t English, be especially careful of language that doesn’t translate easily. Watch out for idioms and phrasal verbs like: “Can you drop by my office later?” or “I’ll try to catch you after the meeting tomorrow.”
- Steph’s extra advice: The same is true for native speakers of English. Keep it simple! And, keep your audience in mind. If you’re writing to people whose first language isn’t English, be especially careful of language that doesn’t translate easily. Watch out for idioms and phrasal verbs like: “Can you drop by my office later?” or “I’ll try to catch you after the meeting tomorrow.”
- One subject per email is best. The other person can reply to an email about one thing, delete it, and leave another in their inbox for later.
- Fantastic advice! An email thread with multiple, unrelated topics is the best way to make sure action items get forgotten.
- Fantastic advice! An email thread with multiple, unrelated topics is the best way to make sure action items get forgotten.
- If you are angry, wait 24 hours before you write. Once you press ‘Send’ you cannot get your email back. Only write what you would be comfortable saying to the person’s face.
- Steph’s extra advice: I’d give similar advice for any important emails. Write it, sleep on it, re-read and edit it in the morning, then send it. However, with Gmail, you can also ‘Undo send’ for up to 30 seconds. Enable it in your General Settings. Do it now…save yourself stress later!
- Steph’s extra advice: I’d give similar advice for any important emails. Write it, sleep on it, re-read and edit it in the morning, then send it. However, with Gmail, you can also ‘Undo send’ for up to 30 seconds. Enable it in your General Settings. Do it now…save yourself stress later!
- Consider layout. Would some of the continuous text be better as bullet points or numbered points? How about putting action items in bold?
- Yes, to bulleted lists! And always include a clear ‘call to action.’ Are you clear about WHY you’re writing your email? What do you want the reader to do? And should your action item be at the beginning of the email or the end (or both if it’s a longer email)?
These are important questions to ask yourself in order to make sure your email is effective, i.e. doing what you want it to do. If you’re not clear about what you need, then don’t be surprised when the other person doesn’t take the time to figure it out for you.
- Yes, to bulleted lists! And always include a clear ‘call to action.’ Are you clear about WHY you’re writing your email? What do you want the reader to do? And should your action item be at the beginning of the email or the end (or both if it’s a longer email)?
- Don’t ignore capital letters, punctuation, spelling, paragraphs, and basic grammar. In a professional context, a careless, disorganized email shows a careless, disorganized mind.
- This is SO important! Your writing reflects so much about you. Everyone makes mistakes (of course!). BUT, repeated lack of attention to detail reflects that you’re careless about details.
For a long time, I couldn’t figure out why I didn’t quite trust our property manager. Her work was fine, but I just felt like I didn’t have much faith in her abilities. Then I realized, it was because we only communicated by email, and her writing was a sloppy, disorganized mess. I didn’t trust she’d pay attention to other details because her writing was so slapdash.
Use spell check! Download the free Grammarly browser extension! There’s really no excuse for not using these tools to help you look more professional.
- This is SO important! Your writing reflects so much about you. Everyone makes mistakes (of course!). BUT, repeated lack of attention to detail reflects that you’re careless about details.
- In your reply, try to match the tone and style of the other person. Also, look for key words from their company culture, or professional are, and ‘echo’ these back to them.
- This can be really tricky to navigate, especially if English isn’t your first language. But we all know that tone is so important…and SO easy to misinterpret in emails. Going back to my poor proptery manager, I assumed based on our email communication that she was overly blunt and always slightly angry. I dreaded emailing her.
However, when I met with her face-to-face for the first time in several years, I was truly surprised to discover she was actually quite nice and friendly. Because her emails never started with friendly intros or ended with polite closings, I’d come away with an incorrect interpretation of her personality. Her emails were always straight to the point…and therefore ‘sounded’ rude.
Learning to convey the right tone in your emails could be considered an art, but it’s actually a skill that can be learned like any other.
- This can be really tricky to navigate, especially if English isn’t your first language. But we all know that tone is so important…and SO easy to misinterpret in emails. Going back to my poor proptery manager, I assumed based on our email communication that she was overly blunt and always slightly angry. I dreaded emailing her.