You’ve Got Etiquette: Email Ethics at the Office
Email has become one of the most significant forms of communication in the business world, yet even intelligent, savvy people can send cringe-inducing emails. Here are some tips to make sure you’re not one of them:
Clarify Your Content
- Above all, read through everything you just wrote to check for clarity, spelling and grammar to avoid your email being passed around and mocked relentlessly. Your fifth grade teacher wasn’t kidding: grammar makes a huge impression. If your email program has spell check, take advantage of it.
- Keep it simple. A former coworker of mine would send me a 400-word essay instead of coming next door and talking to me. I couldn’t imagine why she had enough time to craft such a lengthy email but was too busy to have a three-minute conversation that would be much clearer and more productive. If it’s too complicated to be explained concisely or requires a response before you can continue your thoughts, pick up the phone.
- Don’t talk smack about anyone. Ever. It doesn’t matter if it’s your boss, a colleague, a client or a vendor. Unless you’d say it to the person’s face, it’s best to leave that sort of conversation to a medium that can’t be traced back to you or your company. Email is not a private conversation. Save it for happy hour (but glance over your shoulder first). Legitimate criticism is acceptable, but keep it civil and be prepared to defend yourself.
- Get the addressee’s name right! This is forehead-slappingly simple and yet I run into problems with this weekly. My first name has two common spellings, so I can forgive if someone misses the “h.” However, believe it or not, people regularly address me as “Susan” in email. It boggles the mind. It’s right there in my signature (and my email address!).
Simplify your Style
- Lose the cute fonts and backgrounds. Fuchsia Comic Sans on a powder blue background might be the font-incarnation of your free spirit, but it looks unprofessional. Most annoyingly, the background copies to everyone else’s replies, tainting the whole thread. Some email clients won’t support it anyway, so at best, your efforts may be wasted.
- PLEASE DON’T USE ALL CAPITAL LETTERS: IT MAKES EVEN A POLITE REQUEST LOOK UNNECCESSARILY AGGRESSIVE. SEE? ISN’T THIS EXHAUSTING TO READ? Also, it’s harder to proofread and spell check doesn’t work on all caps. (I misspelled “unnecessarily” and I bet you didn’t catch it.)
- The occasional exclamation point may convey friendliness, but nothing says “nuts” like ending every sentence with one! Read back through and weed out a few! No one will miss them!
Et Cetera
- Stay on the thread. It makes it easier to go back and find the right email later. By replying instead of starting a new email, you cut down on confusion by keeping the previous conversation handy as a reference for anyone reading it.
- Copy only those who need to know. It’s confusing to be copied on messages related to a project in which you’re not involved. Do you waste time reading every email that comes in or risk deleting the one that actually does pertain to you because you’re used to being copied on everything?
- Cut back on unnecessary email – even “thank you” notes. This is a tough one to call. Of course, it’s nice to show gratitude, but some people receive hundreds of messages per day, so it’s much kinder to spare them than to thank them. Just think twice about when you ought to respond and when it’s not really necessary.
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Sarah Buser is TradeMark Media's Studio Manager and Production Assistant. She manages The StyleSheet each month, writes and edits copy and herds cats.
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And my pet peeve…
Include a descriptive subject!
The subject is the first filter that readers use to determine the importance of the email TO THEM. You waste your reader’s time and impose yourself on them by not giving a clue to the contents of the email in the subject. If your subject is annoyingly generic like “need help” or “question for you” then I have no idea what the content of your email is and I am less likely to read it. You may as well leave the Subject line blank since that would provide the same information.
This problem also plagues discuss boards. There is nothing more useless on a discussion board than the subject “need help”. Well doesn’t everybody?
Great comment Scott. A good subject line really helps when trying to retrieve an old message. Thanks for reading and contributing.
-Nick
+ Never use sarcasm unless you are a professional comic/writer.
+ Chop off all of the previous replies, especially if the message has been replied to many time.
+ Be very careful when using e-mail to communicate about difficult situations. E-mail is easily misinterpreted.
I agree with Bob, except for chopping off the previous replies. I think it’s helpful to have a thread to refer back to. If you chop off the previous replies then they could be lost forever. Probably just a matter of preference.
Also, one more thing: Some people’s email clients reply to messages at the bottom instead of the top. This always confuses me for a bit until I figure out what’s going on.
-Nick
Excellent article! Lots of good common sense that is so easy to forget!
I also read in the Statesman yesterday that you should never write in an email anything that you’d read out loud in a court of law. Whew! That’s good advice too!
Thanks, Patti! I appreciate it. That’s a really good way to put it - it’s scary when you think that anything you write in a company email could be used against you like that later. Yikes!