Is your work inbox stuffed with incomprehensible, oversized or irrelevant messages? Follow these simple tips to make sure colleagues and customers smile when
your email arrives.
get your message across
- Use a meaningful subject line – never leave it blank.
- Keep it short – one subject in one email.
- Use clear English – not jargon.
- Avoid abbreviations and acronyms unless you’re sure the other person understands.
- Check your spelling and grammar – a misplaced apostrophe can change the meaning of a sentence.
- Don’t write ALL IN CAPS (which is hard to read, and is seen as “shouting”).
what about the bells and whistles?
- Use ‘urgent’ flags sparingly.
- Use simple formatting – use the standard font and avoid lots of fancy colours, bold and italics.
- Avoid BCC – it’s sneaky.
- Don’t CC ‘just in case’ – only copy in people who really need to know.
- Rather than attaching large files, save them in a shared drive.
when not to email
- Can you phone instead? Or even walk round and talk to the person?
- If you’re in a bad mood, don’t bang out a cross email and hit send. Save a draft and come back to it later.
- Don’t use sarcasm because it can easily be misinterpreted. And never write anything in an email that is libellous or otherwise inappropriate – even as a joke.
These tips are intended for work email but I think most of them can be applied to your private correspondence too. And if you're organising a hen night, one extra rule - be judicious in your use of exclamation marks...
