Email writing

Informal Format of Email

To: Recipient’s email address
Subject: Congratulations!
Dear (Name),
My heartfelt congratulations to you. I was glad to see your name on
the merit list. All your efforts were definitely not in vain. I bet
everyone at home is so proud of you.
You have truly honored the family name, and I am happy that you
would get to take up the course in architecture which you had been
waiting for. I am waiting to meet you in person to convey all my love
and appreciation.
Convey my regards to uncle, aunty and grandpa.
Regards,
Your name
 Formal Format of Email
To: Recipient’s mail id
Subject: Regarding Course Details
Dear Sir,
I have passed the B.Sc. degree examination with Electronics
as the main subject. I intend to have a course in Computer
Science and would like to know the details of the courses
taught at your institution. Could you please send me a copy
of your prospectus?
Yours faithfully,
Your name
 Pitfall of Email writing.
1. Writing a poor subject line
Your email subject line should be relevant to the content contained in
the email. When a discussion begins, the subject line should never say,
“Hey.” This is just too vague, and non-urgent. So, always state the
topic of your message in the subject line.
For example, say you want to send an email to someone with whom
you spoke on LinkedIn, a subject line which says, ‘Continuing our
conversation on LinkedIn’  will serve you better than a ‘Hey’ or
‘Hello’.
As the discussion moves forward, it’s common for the subject line to
be, “RE: X Discussion.” This is fine, as long as your conversation
hasn’t moved on to another topic. As an email thread moves to new
topics of discussion, your subject line should change too – it must
always be relevant.
Not personalizing your greeting
An email is effective when it looks purposeful. It looks purposeful
when you know whom you are contacting. An email without a
personalized greeting could have been meant for just about anyone
and this is never impressive.
For instance, let’s say you are cold emailing a company for a business
opportunity. Don’t say, ‘Hi folks’, instead, do your research and find
out who the head is, verify their email ID,and address them directly by
mentioning their name in the greeting.
Also, even when you are sending additional emails to the same person,
make sure to continue personalizing the greeting. Yes, the first
recipient of your email knows who you’re addressing so, it may seem
redundant to use their name in each message. But, it’s not.
Of course, some of your emails will be forwarded along. The second
and third person to read your message should be clear on who the
message was addressed to. Personalize your greeting with every email
you send.
Employing ambiguous language
Ambiguous language is the murderer of all written
communication. It creates the scope for misunderstanding. If
you write something that can have more than one meaning, no
matter how well the email recipient knows you and the
subject of your content, you run the risk of wasting time and
energy to do some extra explaining, or worse.
Imagine that your teammate misinterprets your gray
instructions and completes an entire project based on your bad
writing. Your project will have to be completed twice. You
will lose resources and miss deadlines. Also, you will damage
your reputation. So, save the ambiguity for poets and make
sure your email communications can only be interpreted one
way.
Announcing too much in one message
Email is meant to be read quickly. 
Leaving your inbox open all day is detrimental for productivi
ty
. So, don’t send out a week’s worth of assignments or
discussions in one email. This will only make it so the
recipient has to keep referring back to this one message. They
will have to more tabs open than necessary and spend too
much time moving back and forth between the email and
what they’re doing.
Instead, keep your emails clear and concise so that the
recipient can address the topic and move on. Make sure that
you cover one topic or project at a time, and each message
can be read and responded to in a matter of minutes.
Additionally, long text-heavy emails usually frustrate or, even
worse, annoy the recipients
Copy and pasting
Of course, there is a time and place for copy and paste, even
in email. But, you might be one of those people who like to
copy and paste entire documents instead of attaching the
files. If so, just stop. Emails should be brief.
When you need to deliver anything that takes more than a
few minutes to read, attach it as a separate file. This way, the
recipient can easily review large portions of information at
his own leisure and will have something outside of the email
inbox for reference.
Forgetting to explain attachments
Not only will the word “attach” trigger your email host to
remind you to upload attachments in case you forget, it will
also give the reader an understanding of what it is they’re
about to open.
In the future, if the recipient needs to find this email, for any
reason, they should be able to use the search feature to do so.
If you haven’t explained what it is you’re sending beyond
“here’s the file I said I would send,” it will make the search
process that much more difficult. So, explain any attachments
clearly, and use relevant keywords.
Using jargon words
Only 21% of communicators keep their language jargon-free. This
means that more than ¾ of people are still using industry slang in
their emails. So, though it may seem like the norm, you need to
take a closer look and pay more attention to your word use.
Sure, Dave in the cubicle next to you probably knows what plug-
and-play means. But, when someone has to send your email thread
to a client, they will have no clue. You will put yourself in the
awkward position of having to explain terms and wasting
everyone’s time in the process.
Note that not everyone will know what you’re talking about when
you use jargon. You may think this is okay now, for whatever level
you’re communicating on, but try to get out of the habit ASAP.
Otherwise, you’re going to waste time and energy explaining niche
terms to people who have no need to know.
Failing to use a signature
Your email signature is a place to sign off with your name
and relevant contact information. Sometimes it can take days
to receive a response to an email, and the recipient will have
urgent business with you. You need to have an alternate
means of communication listed under your email signature.
In your email signature, include as much of the following
information as you’re comfortable with:
First and last name
Professional website URL
Phone number
LinkedIn and/ or other social media profile link(s)
Having a poor email format
I know that having to format your email body is extra
work, but trust me it definitely is worth it.
First, see if you can condense the email content. If that is
not an option, then be a considerate writer and make it easy
for the person on the other end to read, by putting in the
extra effort to format.
Here are some good practices:
Give ample amount of white space so they don’t have to
squint their eyes.
If there are a list fo things to do, present it in a list format.
No long paragraphs.
Legible font size and color.
Use bold text for key points.
Neglecting proofreading
The final, yet most important element of effective emails is
proofreading. You need to check your spelling and grammar
before you hit send. This is true of emails send from a laptop
or PC, but especially true of emails sent from a mobile device.
Some phones have auto-correct features that can mess up your
professional emails as much as the drunk texts you receive
from your friends.
Proofread your emails and double-check your attachments
before you click send. Otherwise, you might end up on the
New York Times website as the laughing stock of the internet.
Just kidding! but you get the point.
Thank you