I get the impression that the art of writing a really good email is slowly dying. Perhaps it’s the advent of instant and text messaging. Perhaps its the increasing use of mobile devices. Perhaps it’s just a symptom of the general decline of English. This posting is intended to help with this process.
In this posting, I thought I would encapsulate my thoughts on and guidelines for writing the perfect email.
1) Consider your audience
A number of people will read your email. You will read it before sending. The recipients will read it also. Will it make sense to them? Remember that you may have occasion to re-read it some time later (perhaps years later). Will it still make sense to you then? Maybe it will be intercepted and read by the NSA. Have you included (perhaps unintentionally) trigger words such as bomb and mayhem? What will they make of it? Will the email be used at some point in the future as part of a court case? Are you casually writing things now which you would not like to have seen in a public forum? Is some ways this is analogous to the advice your mother would have given you about wearing clean underwear in case you're ever involved in an accident. Mothers know best!
When you are considering the audience for your email, the most important person to consider is yourself. Above all make sure that you’re happy with the email: if you can understand it then there is an excellent chance that others will too.
2) Have a start, a middle, and an end
A good email, like any good story, should have a start, a middle and an end. There is nothing more annoying than trying to understand an email which is missing one of these key components.
When you have finished composing your email, re-read it. Does it have a start? Does it have a middle? Does it have an end?
If not, add in the missing element.
3) Include the recipient’s name at the start and your own name at the end
People like to know that you know who you are writing to, and you know who you are. So address the recipient(s) at the start and sign-off properly at the end. “Hi xxx” is a traditional starting phrase. In some circumstances it may be appropriate to substitute “Hello” in place of “Hi”. Very occasionally “Dear” may be appropriate. Never start an email without a proper salutation. Your intended recipients may not realise that the email is relevant to them and they may delete it without reading it properly.
The traditional way to sign off an email is to put “Regards” on the penultimate line and your own name on the ultimate line. “Best wishes” can be used in place of “Regards”, particularly if you know the recipient well and if you like him/her. If you’re in a particular hurry then “Best” can be used in place of “Best wishes”. Speaking of time-savers, I see an increasing trend to just use an initial on the last line in place of your full name. So instead of "Peter" I would simply type "P". As well as saving time this is seen as a "green" approach as you are saving the transmission and storage of those 4 extra bytes (even more important if your name is Christopher or Cassiopeia)
4) Avoid distracting speling and grammer mistakes
There is nothing worser when reeding an important email than too be distracted by poor speling or grammer. Yore recipient may become completely distracked from the content off your email bye the speling and grammer mistakes. We are fortunate in this regard that modern email systems have build-in speling (and somtimes grammer) chequers. So if you are typing something and you notice that the system has underlined a word in red, them take another look at it two sea if you have made an avoidable mistake.
5) Consider the use of To, CC, and BCC carefully
Most email system allow you to add the recipients in any of three places: To, CC, or BCC. The first of these should be used for recipients who are most importing. For this reason it is generally a good idea to include your own manager in the To field. The second should be used for recipients who are less important. The third should be used for recipients where it makes little or no difference whether or not they see the email.
In some circumstances you can elevate a recipient from the CC to the To field. This can lead them to believe that you care more about their opinion than is actually the case.
Note that it is sometimes useful to include all of the recipients in the BCC field. This means that the recipients have no idea who else has received the email. In fact some email system do not display the BCC field to recipients so that the person cannot even figure out how he/she got the email. There are occasions where you can use this to your advantage.
6) Take care with the tone of your email
It is especially important to take care with the tone of your email. It can be difficult to convey meaning in words alone. Humour in an email is particularly tricky. For this reason, in emails (as in blog postings) I generally try to steer clear of humour and sarcasm. Pay special attention if what you're saying in a humorous or sarcastic way could be taken up as being offensive.
If you must sail close to this particular wind then there is a technique that you must become adept at: the use of the "smiley" (or "emoticon"). Consider the difference between these two examples:
"You are without doubt the worst manager I have ever had"
and
"You are without doubt the worst manager I have ever had ;-}"
Notice how the addition of the smiley has completely diffused the sentence.
A smiley which I find indispensable when using sarcasm in an email is :O
It is absolutely amazing how many interesting smileys can be generated using the limited range of symbols which are available in the ASCII character set. My advice is to become familiar with all of them so that you can use (and recognise) them as appropriate.
7) Forwarding emails
Most modern email system allow you to forward emails. This can be very useful in some circumstances. If you find yourself forwarding an email and you’re not sure what you want to add in relation to the email (or perhaps you’re not even sure if you should be forwarding the email) then the three-letter acronym “FYI” is the tried and tested approach.
8) Replying to emails
Replying to emails is a special art and should really be a topic all of its own. There are four main ways to reply to an email: reply to the sender only or reply to all, and reply with or without history. Replying to all is the more common approach: it surprises me that this is not the default on some email systems. By replying to all you can ensure that everyone knows that you have seen the email, that you have read it, and that you have replied. A dilemma that arises in these situations is where a number of people have used the reply to all function and it becomes clear that there is a need to pare down the recipient list. The question is: should you do it or should you leave it to someone else? My advice is to leave it to someone else. If you take someone out of the list, and then another people adds that person back in for a future email, then that person will see that you tried to exclude him/her and may conclude that you were trying to circumvent him/her in some way. Best to play it safe. Remember: emails are free and there is no charge for additional recipients!
I hope you will find these guidelines useful and instructive. Together we can raise the bar when it comes to sending quality emails.