Kent Kobayashi
Tropical Plant & Soil Sciences Dept.
College of Tropical Agriculture & Human Resources
University of Hawaii at Manoa
Electronic mail (e-mail) has become a mainstay in everyday business
communication. No longer casual chitchat, it has joined the ranks of
other forms of communication including business letters, memos, phone
calls, and faxes. As such, it reflects the professionalism of its
users and their organizations.
Here are a few guidelines to help ensure your e-mail messages are concise, clear, and will be read and understood by the recipient.
USE MAILING LISTS
Use a mailing list or a distribution list when sending an e-mail message to a large group of people. Having many e-mail addresses in the To: section of your message is an eyesore and requires the recipient to scroll down just to see the beginning of your message.
RELEVANT SUBJECT LINE
Always include a meaningful subject line in your e-mail message. People receive many messages daily, sometimes numbering in the hundreds. If your message does not have a relevant, meaningful subject line, it may not be read.
Personally, when looking at my list of incoming e-mail messages, if I do not know the sender and/or the subject line is not meaningful, I delete the message without reading it.
If you are replying to a message but are changing the subject, change the subject line also. Better yet, start a new message altogether.
DO NOT CC TO EVERYBODY
Use the cc: field sparingly. Be careful when replying to mailing list messages or to e-mail messages that were sent to many recipients. Do you really want to reply to the entire list?
If you are a recipient of a message that was also sent to many other people, reply to the original sender only. In this way, your reply does not clutter up other people's mailboxes.
People sometimes reply to the sender, but inadvertently cc: to the other recipients. The other recipients are not interested in your reply so send your remarks to the original sender only.
ATTACHMENTS
Do not attach unnecessary files, especially large ones (such as in the MB range). It may overflow the recipient's mailbox. Remember to tell people the format of any attachments you send (for example, pdf; Word).
When replying to the sender, it is unnecessary to keep the attachment; delete it. Consider deleting the attachment before forwarding a message, especially if only your reply is of interest to others.
Provide a brief explanation of the attachment, if needed. For example, an e-mail message such as:
"Please read the attached PDF file regarding the call for START 2 Proposals."
now requires many of the recipients to download the attachment, check
it for viruses, and then open it with Adobe Acrobat just to find out
what START 2 is. Save your recipients all this work and provide a
short explanation of what the attachment is about.
USE SHORT SENTENCES AND PARAGRAPHS
E-mail messages should be concise and to the point. Use short words, sentences, and paragraphs. Try to break your message into logical paragraphs. Leave enough white space between paragraphs so the message is pleasing to the eye and easy to read.
DO NOT USE ALL CAPITAL OR ALL SMALL LETTERS
Do not type in CAPITALS as this is considered to be SHOUTING (and rude). It is also difficult to read. Try to use uppercase words ONLY when trying to emphasize a point. Typing in only lower case is unprofessional.
CHECK SPELLING
Use proper spelling, grammar, and punctuation. A poorly worded e-mail message with misspellings is hard to read, confusing, and reflects professionally on you and your organization.
INCLUDE ONLY WHAT IS NECESSARY IN THE REPLY
When replying, it is unnecessary to include the entire original e-mail message. Include only the minimum amount of the original message so that it will still be relevant and understood by the recipient.
Similarly, when forwarding a message that was sent to you and many others, delete the many e-mail addresses in the original message. Keeping them clutters the message. Further, for the people you are forwarding the e-mail message to, it forces them to scroll pass the addresses before reading the body of the message.
You can break up the original message into paragraphs and comment on them individually to make it clearer. By doing this, it is easier for the recipient to find your reply to specific questions.
MAKE YOUR REPLY STAND OUT
Use some kind of visual indication to distinguish the text in the original e-mail message from your new text. This makes the reply much easier to follow.
Personally, I use [*** my reply here ***] to separate my reply and make it stand out from the original message.
USE ONLY COMMON ABBREVIATIONS
Limit the use of abbreviations to commonly used ones such as FYI (for your information) and BTW (by the way). Beyond that, you may confuse your recipient.
CHECK OUT URLS BEFORE PUTTING THEM IN E-MAIL
MESSAGES
Before sending or forwarding an e-mail message, if there are URLs (web site addresses) in the message, check to see that the URLs work. Also, a brief phrase explaining what the URL links to is helpful. For example,
College of Tropical Agriculture and Human
Resources
http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/ctahr2001/
is more informative than just:
http://www.ctahr.hawaii.edu/ctahr2001/
In this way, the recipient does not have to go to that web site to
see what it is about.
THERE IS NO PRIVACY
Lastly, there is no such thing as private e-mail or a secure mail system. Your e-mail message may be viewed by others or may be forwarded to other people without your knowledge.
Personally, I often forward e-mails (that I receive) to others and also use bcc (blind carbon copy) when sending my messages, which always reminds me never to say anything in an e-mail that I would not say in public.
It is thus unwise to send very personal or sensitive information by e-mail. Do not use e-mail to discuss confidential information.
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