College Students (and others…) Listen up! Good advice on crafting email messages from Neltje Maynez:
When you are in college, or taking classes from an online university, many students are concerned about their class work and keeping up in class. In today’s world, it is even easier to keep in touch with professors. A student merely has to send an email to a professor. They don’t even have to talk face to face. Many professors like emails because they can provide accurate information to the student. However, many professors don’t like email because they feel that students are far too informal with the emails they send. Too often, professors say that they see things like, “Lol”, “Ttyl”, “hee hee” and professors have no idea what those even mean! This skills that are used when you are in college will be used in the workplace. Whether you are a student, or a professional, here are 10 rules to writing a professional email. Your professor (or boss) will be pleased, and you will probably receive a quicker response.
1. Make the Subject Line Count
You want your the person you sent the email to first open your email. They get tons of emails a day, and if it is urgent, you want the recipient to read it. Include what class it is for, and what questions you have. The professor will appreciate it.
2. Get to the Point
If you are able to present the problem in the first sentence, the person will be more willing to help you.
3. Identify Yourself
Especially if this is for a professor (and even a boss) tell them what class you are in, and what section. Many professors teach many classes, and if you tell them which class you are, it will help them answer your questions even faster. If it’s for work, make sure that you are clear about what you are asking about.
4. Keep the Text Language to Yourself
Avoid anything such as “brb”, “ttyl”, that may be good for texting, but keep it out of emails.
5. Keep it Short
You want your email to be very short. Keep it around 1to 2 paragraphs. If it is longer than that―but you must send it, try including bullet points. The recipient will be more likely to read it. If you have a lot to say, try just talking to the professor. It will be easier for both parties if you need to talk at length.
6. Say Hello!
It is always nice when you add a small hello, or good morning, or good afternoon. It shows that you are trying to be polite. You aren’t bothering the recipient with lots of showy sayings, but you aren’t being rude either.
7. Proofread
Make sure to read your email before you send it. You will be able to catch a lot of mistakes. Your professor and co-workers will respect you if you can spell and have proper punctuation. This will also get you in the habit of reading over your work before you submit it.
8. Be Pleasant
Just because you are annoyed with a professor or co-worker, don’t show it in your email. They will be less willing to help you.
9. Respond Fast
Email is supposed to be fast. If you don’t respond within 24 hours, the person you sent the email to will forget about your question. Even if you respond and tell the person that you got their email, but you don’t have the time to draft an appropriate answer, let them know. They will appreciate that you took the time to inform them.
10. Have an Appropriate Signature Line
Make sure that if you have a signature set up on your email, it is profession and free of quotes, silly fonts, or smiley faces. Others will think you are immature if you send them an email and your signature is something in pink with smiley faces.
Writing emails can be an art. You want to be pleasant while getting straight to the point. If you learn to write good emails to your professors, they will want to help you. You will also be building skills when you go to the professional world. Any professional appreciates a well-written email.
The Author
Neltje Maynez is a current writer for MyCollegesandCareers.com. My Colleges and Careers is a site that helps people get to their top careers.
What to you think of Jessica’s tips?
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If there is one golden rule for writing business emails, it is this: do not write anything that you would not write in a paper letter. Approach your professional email correspondence with the same mindset you would have for hard-copy letters. Here are a few more specific tips.
• Stick with a simple, easy-to-read font such as Times New Roman, and always use black as the text’s color.
• In the salutation, there is no reason to stray from the classic “Dear Mr./Ms. _________” form, at least for initial contacts. Of course, if the recipient has invited you to use his or her first name, you should do so—but never assume otherwise.
• In the body of the letter, use simple, direct and polite phrasing, accompanied by proper spelling and grammar. Take advantage of spell-check programs. Avoid writing in all capital letters, which comes across as shrill, or all lower-case letters, which seems juvenile.
• Do not send large, unsolicited attachments. Instead, make an initial inquiry asking permission to do so.
• Conclude your letter with some variant of “Sincerely,” and always remember to include your own name afterwards. Beneath your name, you can add the elements you would include in a business letterhead, such as your company’s website or other contact information; just do not overdo it by creating a signature of more than about five lines.
• Even though email is sometimes called “instant communication,” you should give your recipient a reasonable window of time to respond to your email. For your part, always respond to others as promptly as you can.
Please enjoy this guest post by Sierra Greenman…
When I worked at my second job, I was always told to smile while I was talking on the phone. The idea behind this concept was so that my smile would translate into talking with a happy voice. Well, I believe the same goes for e-mailing. There are ways you can “smile” through an e-mail to show people you care. Here are a few tips.
1. Ask Them How They Are Doing
The first way to get to a client or co-worker is to ask them how they are doing. They’ll appreciate that you took the time to think of them and ask how life is going.
2. Remain Caring Within an E-mail
Of course you want to stay professional when e-mailing, but if you also want to remain caring, you can bring up something that they’re currently excited about. For example, if you know a client has a daughter in dance and an important dance recital just took place, ask them how it went. They’ll like that you cared enough to think of them and “smile” through your e-mail.
3. Type in a Smiley Face 
If you are on friendly terms with a boss, co-worker, or sales lead, it never hurts to type a within your e-mail. Whenever they see your smiley face they won’t be able to help but smile themselves.
Staying happy and smiling through your e-mail will make work more productive and people a lot happier. We all need a lot more smiling in e-mails, don’t you think?
Sierra is a freelancer and writer. She enjoys being a featured fashion blogger for JoeShopping.com, a social shopping site. Discover happy cards that make you smile from JoeShopping.com and save with American Greetings Coupons. Sierra also runs her own personal blog at Ocean Dreams.
Here are 10 great email etiquette tips by Sean Gray:
E-mail is a fast and effective tool for communication in business. There is a certain expectation of etiquette that is required to maintain professional communication. While e-mail is often used as an informal tool, it is essential that in the workplace it is used with professional etiquette.
The following 10 tips can help you and your employees maintain professional and positive relationships with clients, fellow employees, supervisors, and potential customers.
1. Write in complete sentences and check for
spelling and grammar mistakes.
2. Do not write in all caps.
3. Get to the point. Do not write long, laborious e-mails.
4. Be careful when choosing, “Reply All”. Make sure your reply is indeed intended for “all”.
5. Reply to e-mails in a timely manner. In this day and age of technology, it is understood that all e-mails are usually received within minutes of sending. It should not take a weekor more to reply.
6. Do not use emoticons in business replies. Emoticons are informal and not appropriate in business communications.
7. Do not use e-mail to relay confidential information.
8. Do not forward e-mails that are libelous, defamatory, racist or sexist. This could land your business or company at the other end of a lawsuit.
9. Choose a meaningful subject for easy review.
10. Use BCC when sending out large mailings. You do not want to indicate that the message is being sent to a large group of recipients nor do you want to publish other recipients’ e-mail addresses without permission.
It has happened to everyone, they get an email that just sets them off. This happened to me last week. I was getting ready to leave for the day, and Ijust so happened to check my email, and I found a scathing email from one of my co-workers. I was so mad, it said some things in there that shouldn’t be said in an email. At first, I wanted to respond right away with my thoughts. Then, I decided that it wasn’t such a good idea. If this has ever happened to you, here are 5 tips to dealing with an extremely scathing email.
1) Don’t respond right away
The first thing that you will want to do when you get a mean email is reply with a few choice words of your own. Don’t do it. Again, don’t do it! You won’t believe how many conflicts you can avoid if you wait before hitting reply. Allow yourself to calm down and figure out why the person sent the email. Count to three, take a bathroom break, just don’t reply to the email just yet.
2) Be Polite
After you have cooled down a bit, and you are ready to reply to the email, think about what you are going to say. Start off the email being polite, don’t let the person sending the email get the best of you. If you can show that it doesn’t affect you, they won’t bother you. Sometimes, the sender won’t even mean to have a harsh tone, and if you start the email off nicely, they will think that the email they sent was silly.
3) Offer a solution
Even if you are mad, offer a solution. Offer to fix the problem, or better yet, offer to talk to the person face to face. If you do this, you will be able to solve problems a lot faster.
4) Stand your ground
Just because someone is mad at your for something, doesn’t mean that you should back off because they sent you a rude email. If you are in the wrong―and you know it―apologize. If you don’t think that you are, don’t let people walk all over you. If it gets too complicated, offer to talk in person. You might think that someone was trying to be rude, when in reality, they meant something completely different.
Emails are sometimes hard to address. Because emails are written, it is a lot easier to write something mean rather than facing someone else. If you get an email where you feel attacked, follow these four steps. You will feel a lot better about dealing with the situation. If you follow these steps, you will also not do something (or write) something
About the Author
Neltje Maynez is a freelance writer for MyCollegesandCareers.com. My Colleges and Careers helps people determine if an online education is right for them, helps them understand which online masters degree programs are right for them and which online schools they can choose from to reach their goals.
Writing an email has certain etiquette rules that you should know about. Here are 7 email etiquette tips to be aware of when writing an email for work.
1) Get to the Point
If you are able to present the problem in the first sentence, your boss will be more willing to help you.
2) Keep the Text Language to Yourself
Avoid anything such as “brb”, “ttyl”, that may be good for texting, but keep it out of emails.
3) Keep it Short
You want your email to be very short. Keep it around 1 to 2 paragraphs. If it is longer than that―but you must send it, try including bullet points.
4) Say Hello!
It is always nice when you add a small hello, or good morning, or good afternoon. It shows that you are trying to be polite.
5) Proofread
Make sure to read your email before you send it. You will be able to catch a lot of mistakes.
6) Be Pleasant
Just because you are annoyed with a professor or business associate, don’t show it in your email. They will be less willing to help you.
7) Have an Appropriate Signature Line
Make sure that if you have a signature set up on your email, it is professional and free of quotes, silly fonts, or smiley faces. Professors and co-workers will think you are immature if you send them an email and your signature is something in pink with smiley faces.
Writing emails can be an art. You want to be pleasant while getting straight to the point. Any professional appreciates a well-written email.
About the Author
Neltje Maynez is a freelance writer for MyCollegesandCareers.com. My Colleges and Careers helps people determine if an online education is right for them and helps them understand which online schools they can choose from to reach their goals and start top careers.
Some people might think that this one’s a bit crazy… Why should I include my email address in my email autosignature? Can’t they just hit reply? Or see the email address at the top?
Sure they can. But there is another reason…
With all the electronic commerce out there, people are using autosignatures more and more to download your contact info into their databases. Make it easy for them to have ALL your information, in one transaction.
Services like AddressGrabbler make it easy to transfer address info with one or 2 clicks of a mouse into DB managers like Outlook Contacts and ACT.
Credit: Free images from acobox.com
ACTION: If your autosignature doesn’t have your email address in it, add it today!
What might you do that can hurt your career prospects at work?
This MSN distributed article by Meghan Casserly gives you some great “don’ts!”
What about ccing the boss? Calling to check if that email was received?
PS. Her Girl Friday blog is awesome.
Way to go Meghan Casserly – alot of great tips on how to NOT email on the job.
Here’s the link.
And for a quick excerpt, “People do or say things via email that they would never do in person. They’d never upstage a higher up in a meeting, but in email there’s this disconnected feeling of not having to look anyone in the eye that emboldens people to act in competitive or even arrogant ways.”
Are you an email flipper?
Waaaaaa? Wadyamean, flipper?
An email flipper is a person who can’t bear just let an email “rest.” In other words, you receive an email, think there is some good information in it, and just HAVE TO think of someone to send it to, then send it.
OK OK. We’ve all done it.
But consider this – with the average worker getting 110 emails each day, is it good or poor etiquette to add more to their mix? Why not decide to only send emails that are critical or important – not “nice to have.”
Why do some people feel compelled to flip? Dunno. Perhaps they want to feel productive, perhaps they want others to know they’re thinking of them, or maybe even that they just can’t take the reigns and say “Good info, now onto the next task.” What to you think?
Challenge for the week: Don’t “flip” them, let them rest
