How to Write an Email

Photo Credit: plaisanter~

So here’s the first instalment of my “How to Write an EMail” series. Originally, I had meant for this to be a single post. About 650 words later, I found myself only just wrapping up Step 1. It turns out I’m pretty passionate about email. Who knew? The more I think about it, the more I realize how many people don’t have a solid approach to email. The result being a lot of frustration, miscommunication, and general office ugliness. Bad times. So, I’ve decided to make this a bit of a series. I hope you enjoy what I’ve got to share, and that the process I suggest makes a difference in how you work. Enjoy, and please share this with anyone you might think could benefit from it!

Why Focus on Email?

In today’s workplace, email – among all other electric means of communicating – is totally ubiquitous. Try and imagine working a day without email. It’s tough, isn’t it? I think there’s a lot to be thankful for in terms of how email has changed the way we work, but at the same time I think we could seriously improve how we use email. As useful as it can be, it can also be one of the most frustrating things you deal with in your day-to-day work when it’s misused (which is pretty much all the time).

In this series, I want to point out some major considerations when writing an email. Follow these steps, and you’ll be well on your way to improving your efficiency, and your professionalism. Today, we’ll take on Step 1.

Step 1 – Decide if you should write an email in the first place

This might seem ridiculous, but the first step in writing an email is actually to decide if you should even write one in the first place. There are three show-stoppers that you should be aware of before you open Outlook (or if you’re really lucky, Lotus Notes). Before you start, always ask yourself three questions:

1. Is your email a general, unsolicited FYI, or something similar?
2. Is there a better way to communicate this?
3. Are you angry about the subject at hand?

If you answer “yes” to any of the above questions, stop what you’re doing, remove your hands from the keyboard, and step slowly away from your desk. That’s it, niiiiiiiice and easy. Nobody’s gonna get hurt if we all just take a moment to breathe.

Allow me to explain.

Question 1

For the first question, if you don’t need to communicate anything, why are to taking time to write the email? If you’re like most people, there’s plenty of important stuff to be doing and thinking about during the run of a day. Nobody’s looking for extra stuff to consider. If your email is just for “information”, or is an unsolicited “status update”, or a “warning that there might, possibly be a problem some time in the future, maybe” then you might consider holding off.

Think about it: how many emails do you get in the run of a day that really don’t impact your life in any way, shape or form? For me, about 50% of the emails I get are not all that pertinent to my work, and just serve to distract me from doing that work. A good litmus test for question 1 is to decide whether there’s any specific action for the recipient to take. If not, then save yourself the time, and help a fellow coworker out by not overloading their already uncomfortably bloated inbox.

Question 2

Believe it or not, there are other ways besides email to communicate with your coworkers! Hooray! So, use ’em! Email is best used to summarize conversations you had, to document things that really need to be documented, and to ask specific questions. If you expect a lot of back-and-forth, or need very broad or very deep information, it might be best to actually go and talk instead of email. Besides, you should take any excuse to get up and stretch your legs every once in a while. It’s not good to sit still in a cubicle all day. You might also consider IM, using a phone, or messenger pigeon.

Question 3

Simply put, if you write an email where you’re clearly angry, that will not bode well for you. First of all, you’re probably not communicating effectively if you’re hot under the collar – so the best you can hope for is a confused recipient. Secondly, you could end up starting an office feud. Bad times. Not just that – bad times documented. Best just to cool off for a while, then have someone proofread your message to filter out all things overly aggressive. “Does not get along with others” is not something you want to show up in your annual performance review, let alone with documentation to prove it. It wasn’t good in first grade, and it won’t be good as a professional engineer.

Moving Forward

Okay – I hope Step 1 was helpful! In the next couple of weeks, I’m planning on tackling these amazingly important issues.

• Punctuation – Use it, but use it carefully
• Capslock and other formatting woes
• Full Sentences and why the English Language has “Grammar”
• Bullets – Pow!
• What you write and how it reflects you as a professional
• Attachments
• Replying
• CC/BCC – who to copy, why, and when
• Subject lines
• Email signatures

These won’t necessarily all be separate posts, but are all things I want to cover. If you have any burning questions about any of these topics, please let me know in the comments below and I’ll be sure to tackle them. Also, if you can dream up and additional topics, I’d love to know about those too – just post in the comments below.