Geek-Cube: Emails
At my work, I was always overloaded with the most horrible of emails, all set in Comic Sans (a personal pet peeve) with the worst grammar ever. No capitalization, using “U” instead of “you” or “R” instead of “are”, and loads of apostrophes used incorrectly to pluralize words. Well, as many of us must realize, this sets a very bad example and gives whoever you’re emailing a bad impression. Today’s article will be full of tips and warnings so that your emails can be effective and give that great impression you need them to.
First and foremost, use your subject line. Be concise and give a brief notice as to why you are emailing. If it is urgent and if you need a reply, it could be acceptable to state that it is time-sensitive in the subject line as well. Another important thing is to always be sure you greet the recipient in the body of your email and close it professionally with thanking them for their time and including your name and business contact information. (It helps to have that set up automatically.) Do NOT use Comic Sans or other “fun” typefaces for a business email, but stick to something professional-looking. Yes, Times New Roman might look boring, but it is professional.
In the body of your email, make sure you have used proper spelling and grammar. Don’t rely on your spell-checker to catch mistakes. Remember, “your” and “you’re” are both correct spellings but may not be correct in context, for example. Avoid abbreviations such as “BTW” for “by the way”. Keep your language professional, polite, gender-neutral, and by all means, do not leave your CAPS LOCK ON LIKE THIS. It’s been proven that the human eye reads lower-case letters more easily than all capitals as a good reader will detect the shape of the word before the letters that compose it. Keep sentences to the point, but avoid making it seem as though you’re talking down to the recipient, and use active tenses instead of passive tenses. By all means, do not over-use ellipses and watch your punctuation. Yes, all of the lessons on grammar you learned in Elementary school really do count for something.
When you receive an email, it’s best to reply as soon as possible, and if what you have to say won’t fit in an email or needs more explanation, just pick up the phone and call the recipient. It’s fine to show some personality in your email, and it’s even better to throw in politeness. Good manners can go a long way, just don’t over-do it. Make sure you prioritize and keep it professional, and you shouldn’t have anything to worry about.
Geek-Cube is a weekly column about integrating your geek life with your work environment.
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http://mousewings.livejournal.com/ Iris
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