When we converse, we expect other people to observe certain rules of behavior. The same is true for e-mail, the most popular form of online communication. Here are a few pointers to help you communicate more effectively.
1. Mind Your Manners: Think of the basic rules you learned growing up, like saying please and thank you. Address people you don’t know as Mr., Mrs., or Dr. and only address someone by first name if they imply it’s okay to do so.
2. Watch Your Tone: It is very difficult to express tone in writing. You want to come across as respectful, friendly, and approachable. You don’t want to sound curt or demanding.
3. Be Concise: Get to the point of your email as quickly as possible, but don’t leave out important details that will help your recipient answer your query.
4. Be Professional: This means, stay away from abbreviations and don’t use emoticons (those little smiley faces). Don’t use a personal email address for business communications.
5. Use Correct Spelling and Proper Grammar: Use a dictionary or a spell checker. While you can write in a conversational tone pay attention to basic rules of grammar. And most importantly make sure you spell the recipient’s name correctly!
6. Ask Before You Send an Attachment: Because of computer viruses, many people won’t open attachments unless they know the sender. Even that can be a mistake because many viruses come disguised in email messages from someone you know.
7. Wait to Fill in the “TO” Email Address: This will keep you from accidentally sending an email prematurely or accidentally as it’s very hard to retrieve emails once sent.
8. Clearly summarize your message in the subject line. Properly titled messages help people organize and prioritize their e-mail. This also applies for reply emails.
9. Avoid using Reply All. These days everyone receives too much e-mail. Unnecessary messages are annoying. If only a few people really need to receive your message, only direct it to them. Similarly, when responding to e-mail, do not respond to all recipients. By choosing Reply to All or a similar button when responding to a message, you may end up broadcasting your response to your entire company.
10. Use BCCs (Blind Carbon Copies) when addressing a message to a group of people who don’t necessarily know each other. Just as it’s not polite to give out a person’s telephone number without his or her knowledge, it’s not polite to broadcast everyone’s e-mail address. For instance, when you send a message to 30 people and use the To or CC fields to address the message, all 30 people see each other’s address. By using BCC, each recipient sees only two–theirs and yours.
11. Avoid using all capital letters. IT MAKES IT LOOK LIKE YOU’RE SHOUTING! IT’S ALSO MORE DIFFICULT TO READ.
12. Don’t write anything you wouldn’t say in public. Anyone can easily forward your message, even accidentally. This could leave you in an embarrassing position if you divulged confidential information, made a nasty comment about someone or circulated an off-color joke. If you don’t want to potentially share something you write, consider using the telephone.
13. Include your name at the bottom of the message. Emails contain your e-mail address in the header, but the recipient may not know that the sender’s address is yours, especially if it’s different from your real name. It’s recommended you set up an automatic email signature with your name and contact details.
E-mail etiquette may take a while to learn, but don’t let your fear of making mistakes inhibit you. All Internet users were beginners once, so most people are quite forgiving.
Sources:
Email Etiquette By Dawn Rosenberg McKay, About.com Guide
http://www.learnthenet.com/learn-about/email-etiquette/index.php
