Email - Electronic mail has emerged as the strong media of communication in the past 2/3 decades of Internet era. Everyday tons and tons of emails flies from one end of planet to the other without any obstacles reaching its destination whether rain or shine. It transformed the day-today communication pipeline from the slower snail mail way to a much faster and revolutionary media with great modern touch.
It can be basically divided into into 2 broad categories, personal and business oriented. Business transactions become so easy and faster than ever with the email service. Like example, you order a book in amazon and you get an immediate confirmation email from the seller which guarantees, they have received your order with the status every time instead of waiting for days to find out.
On the other side, Personal emails has transcended from its initial level to its current stage with lot more add-on functionalities to add pictures and movies and much more. It is also moved out from the old 1KB bottleneck period to its 1GB space, giving more freedom to the emailers with a competitive and diversed nature embedded in them. When I first got here, I wrote letters to my parent using foreign inland envelope which took 7-10days to reach them. Now they don't have to wait that long. At a click of the button, they will get my letter via email in a blink of a second. Its that fast as you all know.
But at same time, I didn't want to diminish the essence of getting snail mails or hand written letters. They are always precious, giving true originality with a different feeling all-together compared to the emails. It reflects the real sense of the message that senders wants to pass on own hand writing. There is no doubt about it. In this fast moving world, snail mail main purpose has be vanished and its used mainly for marketing purposes. That's entirely a different topic to all-together.
Lets segway back the email conversation. With this paramount need for email communication at this time of age, there is not much effort has been put in place to educate a common person or individual to write a well defined mails to communicate effectively. We write 2 sentences for a one liner information or send single liner which might need to be explained with more words. We either underdo it or go over the limit to overdo it. It will never be the same message you want to get across to another person, if you don't know how to write an effective email.
I have learned some good practices and nitty gritty things in my past personal and professional experience which helps me everyday to get across the message effectively.
First thing first, we usually don't think about the subject or message context deeply before we type it. We just put some random thoughts together about that topic and just press send. Sometime it works but most of time it creates problems.
Instead, before you ever type anything into a new message, have explicit answers for two questions:
- Why am I writing this?
- What exactly do I want the result of this message to be?
If you can answer to these questions, that answer will definitely drive you to write a good email with proper message.
Next important thing is the Subject line. Subject line is like the title of an article. In few words you should convey the abstract of the message. It summarizes the whole request concerned in the message. Avoid using too attention-putting words just to get the recipient attention to read your message. And do not use the word URGENT at all or in capitals, except when it really is very urgent.
Some Examples:
- Reminder: Meeting reschd to 2pm.
- HELP: Can you defrag my C drive?
- Thanks for the new liver–works great!
After getting the right subject line, you need to address the email properly according to person. That's where Greetings play a important role.
Greeting: The first word in the message text area may be a greeting. A one-word greeting is often used. Using a greeting makes the message more personal. There are a number of ways to write the greeting. You may just give the recipient's first or last name. Or you may just write the word "Greeting". Do not use traditional letter greetings such as "Dear Sirs" or "Gentlemen". You can "Hi" or "Hello" or "Dear first name,"
After the greeting, the first sentence of your message is the another important part in your message. The important might vary according to each person and situation. You can start casually like "How are you?" or "You can introduce yourself". When a person reads your message, he or she has at least five questions in mind like, who and what, when and where, and why. Your job is to answer these questions.
Answers to these questions should be in the first paragraph. Then if needed, the supporting information to these questions should be in further paragraphs. As you start writing, you need to make sure why you are writing. What is your purpose? Are you writing to ask, inform, persuade or motivate, or am I writing with more than one purpose in mind. Then you ask yourself what information will accomplish my purpose.
Put yourself into the reader's shoes. Then help him or her get the most important information right in the first sentence. The writing of a good first sentence may take nearly as much time as the writing of the rest of the message.
Key Points: When possible, use lists of key-points. This makes the message easier to read. There are at least three ways to organize lists in email. You may embed the list in your text and save space.
Key Points: When possible, use lists of key-points. This makes the message easier to read. There are at least three ways to organize lists in email. You may embed the list in your text and save space.
An embedded list is used usually for items that are presented in a particular order. The first point would be (1), the second point would be (2) etc. These points are easy to see and follow.
1. A numbered list is similar to the above list, except that each line starts with a new number and the bracets are omitted.
2. Thus this is an example of a numbered list of two items.
* You may also use bullets, that may look like an asterisk * or a dash-.* These are written in front of the line and make the items stand out.* Bullets are used when there is no particular sequence to the list.* This is an example of bullets.
Closings:Finally the Closings of the email. The usual closing is your name. If you are in doubt that the recipient know you well, use your full name. And do so also for class assignments. With a friend that you write back and forth all the time, the first name is sufficient. Some people like to end with the words "Regards""Cheers" "Thanks", or the abbreviation for thanks, "THK", followed by their name. There is usually no punctuation mark after the your name in the closing. You may put two hyphens before your closing in order to set it off, like --Regards, Vijai
As per my experience from the day I started using emails till today, email has taken different avatars to transform itself to get to the current simpler form. We are now see icons called Emoticons being used to express the mood of the sender.
Emoticons: To share with your recipient your feelings about something, some people use "emoticons." These are generally understood symbols that communicate feelings. A smile is, if you turn your head sideways, looks like :-). A frown is :-(, a big smile is :-D, a wink is ;-). An "Oh, no1" is :-o. There are many more like this. Some people use acronyms like IMO, in my opinion, or BTW, by the way, CYA for See you, or FYI that stands for For your information.
The nice style for email writing is called netiquette.
Here is some Do's and Don'ts,
1) Write replies immediately and don't put on hold. If you do want to take time, send a quick acknowledgement of your receipt of the email.
2) Use kind language, never be rude. Some people write insulting email called "flaming". There is no need to do so. Like in all relationships, kindness goes a long way.
3) Do not use all capitals. That is called shouting and it is not polite.
4) Do not underline or use bold face, your computer may not understand that.
1) Write replies immediately and don't put on hold. If you do want to take time, send a quick acknowledgement of your receipt of the email.
2) Use kind language, never be rude. Some people write insulting email called "flaming". There is no need to do so. Like in all relationships, kindness goes a long way.
3) Do not use all capitals. That is called shouting and it is not polite.
4) Do not underline or use bold face, your computer may not understand that.
5) Add spell checker or try to do spell checking as an habit before you send.
6) Don't use acronymns when it can be avoided. Not everybody is a geek like you.
7) Use colors and pictures as and when needed only. Don't overdo your message, it might send a wrong signal.
8) Don't send big bulk files seperately in your message. Make Zip file of it and send it as one file which would help the receiver a ton.
9) No thanks - In more informal settings and in high-volume mail environments, it’s not necessary to respond with a “Thanks” email whenever someone does what you asked. Save your gratitude for the next time you pass in the hall; a one-word “Thanks” email can be crufty and unnecessary. On the other hand, don’t hesitate to thank someone. Just use your judgement to decide on it.
10) Finally, do the right thing of reviewing your message the last time before you click the send button. Trust me, it helps a lot and saved me few times.
These pointers helps to take the emails to next level instead of just words and sentences to communicate effectively and efficiently.
