General tips for writing good emails

Perhaps you think that it is not worth spending time on emails. They are informal, written quickly, and no-one minds if you make mistakes. Well, that is true for some emails, for example emails between close friends. But what about an email to someone where you want to make a good impression? Or what about an email where you want to be a bit more careful or more diplomatic than usual? Or what about an email ina professional context? It takes awareness and practice to write in a style that fits the context.

Here are some general tips as a reminder for writing good emails:

1. Use a 'subject line' that summarises briefly and clearly the content of the message. Your email may be one hundreds on
the recipient's computer, and you want them to read it when it arrives and then find it again easily in their files.
2. Use short, simple sentences. Long sentences are often difficult to read and understand. The most common mistake for
learners of English is to translate directly from their own language. Usually the result is a complicated, confusing sentence.
3. One subject per email is best. The other person can reply to an email about one thing, delete it, and leave another email
in theri 'Inbox' that needs more time.
4. Be very careful with jokes, irony, personal comments, etc. Humour rarely translates well from one culture to another.
And if you are angry, wait for 24 hours before you write. Once you press 'Send' you cannot get your email back. It canbe
seen by anyone and copied and sent round the world.The intimate, informal nature of email makes people write things
that they shouldn't. Only write what you would be comfortable saying to the person's face.
5. Take a moment to review and edit what you have written. Is the main point clear? Would some pieces of continuous text
be better as bullet points or numbered points? Is it clear what action you want the recipient to take? Would you be happy
to receive this email? If in doubt, ask a friend to quickly look through and make comments.
6. Don't ignore capital letters, punctuation, spelling, paragraphs, and basic grammar. It might be okay when you are writing
to a very close friend, but to everyone else it's an important part of the image that you create. A careless, disorganised
email shows the outside world a careless, disorganised mind.
7. Use the replies you receive to modify your writing to the same person. If the recipient writes back in a more informal ot
more formal style, then match that in your future emails to them. If they use particular words or phrases that seem to
come from their company culture, or professinal area, then consider using those words yourself where they are
appropriate.
8. Be positive! Look at these words: activity, agreed, evolving, fast, good question, helpful, join us, mutual, productive,
solve, team, together, tools, useful. Now look at these: busy, crisis, failure, forget it, hard, I can't, I won't, impossible,
never, stupid, unavailable, waste. The words you use are likely to show others your attitude to life.