Professional Email Writing Tips are being discussed in this article.Do you have problems writing emails at work or for family? Here are 6 steps that will help when sending that important message without being misunderstood.
1. WRITE SHORT E-MAILS
Leave your email as short as possible. Writing a long email is the way for two things to happen:
- You never get a response because …
- your email will never be read.
Reduce your email to what is essential . Of course, this is harder than you think; once Abraham Lincoln said:
I did not have time to write a shorter letter, instead I wrote a long one.
Never write an e-mail that talks about various topics. If you want an answer, you have to make it an easy task for the other person. Dont overload it with a lot of subjects.If you have several unrelated subjects to talk about, the best way is to send several separate emails.
3. WRITE CLEAR EMAILS
It’s very easy to interpret emails in the wrong way. So be sure that your email is as clear, straightforward and easy to understand as possible. That means, as I said at the beginning of the article, to avoid abbreviations, to beware of grammar, and to use commas the right way . This may sound annoying, but being careful about these details can make a big difference (even more so if you’re writing to your boss!).
The hard part is making sure that you are explaining exactly what you think. It is very easy to forget that the knowledge you have is not the same as the other person has. Before writing the email, put yourself in the other’s shoes – think about the best way to explain it to someone who is not as familiar with it as you are.When replying to an email, keep the original text to which you are replying, this helps to make things clear.
5. WRITE THE SUBJECT ONLY AFTER COMPLETING THE E-MAIL
The subject is often not included in emails. It is usually the first thing you write, even before you know exactly what the message will say. This is why subjects are often vague or useless, such as “Hi” or “Good morning!”.Write the message to know exactly what it is, only then go back and write the subject of the email.
Subject : Hey!
Remember what we said the other day? I need to know more things to do that, what do you think of the new place?
This is a bad email. The subject gives no indication of what is written. The message assumes that the other person remembers what was talked about earlier, combines two different topics and still ends with a poorly asked question.
EXAMPLE OF Professional Email Writing Tips
Let’s see a way to improve this message by making it clear, accurate and informative.
Subject : Re: New site for the seminar – about what we talked about yesterday about the place change for the seminar of 30th August.
Could you please tell me:
- The name and address of the new location
- Do you think the space is suitable for 500 people?
This one is so much better. The subject remembers the other person about what was spoken and the message says exactly what it needs, clearly and directly.
I want to emphasize again the importance of this in a work environment or even when you are in university and are communicating with colleagues or teachers.
Many professionals full of knowledge of their areas have serious problems of communication because they do not dominate the Portuguese language – and this generates great damages for the companies .
A practical and quick way to solve this kind of problem is investing in you, in your knowledge – a course like Online Business Writing is a recommendation that I always give and that has helped several people that I have already indicated, including serving as argument for promotions and salary increases .
Investing in you, in your knowledge, will allow you to learn and master things like:
- READ x read: how to understand the lines between the text;
- Qualities of the text: clarity, objectivity and cohesion;
- How to avoid ambiguous constructions;
- Textual structure: emails, reports and other types of requested business texts;
- Argumentation and the most common mistakes;
- Coherence: logical articulation of ideas.
All this will serve to highlight you in the job market and to differentiate you from other people who do not have the ability to write.
