We don’t hear much about online etiquette anymore. With the explosion of the Internet and its increasing integration into more or less every aspect of our lives, we have become so accustomed to navigating the digital sphere that we probably feel that we can do no wrong.
Maybe so, but this level of exposure and usage also means we have no excuses. Particularly when it comes to email, we spend so much time sending and receiving them that we really should know the dos and don’ts by now. You have no doubt been on the receiving end of a message that has made you wonder how the sender could have possibly produced such a monstrosity. But is there a chance that someone out there is accusing you of the same thing?
Surely a little refresher can’t hurt. Though it is sometimes a case of personal taste or opinion, here are the 10 key rules to sending a good email according to findcourses.co.uk.
1. Write a direct, meaningful subject line.
People have short attention spans these days. Chances are the average professional will scan the subject line of an email and use it to decide how important message is likely to be and whether it requires an immediate response. You should make this decision easy for them by writing a brief, direct subject line that clearly states the subject of the email. Don’t bury the lead at the end of a needlessly long sentence that they won’t even be able to read as the email piles up in their inbox alongside 50 others. Short and sweet is the way forward.
2. Stick to one font.
This is good netiquette in general, but perhaps particularly so in the case of emails. Mixing fonts and colours makes them difficult to read, as well as giving them a distinctly unprofessional feel. If you are copying and pasting numbers, links or text from other places, take the extra time to format the copied material so that it matches the rest of the message. It takes hardly any time and will make a world of difference.
3. Make sensible use of spacing.
There is nothing less appealing than a solid block of text that looks like an imitation of a James Joyce stream of consciousness piece. You need to make your message palatable to the person that you’re writing to, and a big part of this is spacing out your text – with paragraphs and bullet point lists, if necessary – so that it’s easy to read and doesn’t scare the recipient. A good idea may also be linking single words or phrases rather than pasting long, unappealing links that take up a lot of space.
Bear in mind that there is only so much you can write in an email. Regardless of spacing, if it’s getting to essay length, you probably need to organise a meeting with that person instead.
4. Only cc people when necessary.
You may think you’re doing people a favour by keeping them in the loop about things that they are perhaps not directly involved in, but still to some extent affected by. In some cases this is true, in others it’s just spam. Don’t constantly Cc your boss or colleagues just for the sake of it – if you have been given the responsibility to handle something, then handle it and only involve your boss & others when the task is complete. They don’t care about the 25 back and forth emails you need to send & receive to get there – they care about the result.
5. Know when to Reply and when to Reply All.
Reply sends a response exclusively to the sender, Reply All will reply to the sender as well as everyone who was Cc’ed in the original message. We recommend applying much the same logic as that we outlined in point 4 – who actually needs to see your reply?
The added complication here is that you need to think about whether there is anyone who absolutely mustn’t see your reply and ensure you don’t keep them in the thread by mistake. It’s dangerous territory when you are not producing the message from scratch so be warned.
6. Don’t start new conversations in old threads.
This is related to point 1 – you want the person receiving the email to know the area or topic that your message is about. Although it can be tempting to open an existing thread where one exists, this will naturally make the receiver think that you are sending new information about the topic that is in the subject line. If this is not the case, start fresh and avoid confusing or irritating your recipient.
7. Don’t forward irrelevant or unprofessional threads.
Say that you are emailing with a colleague about how to handle a situation with a client. The subject line is already there, you now have all the info you need to approach the client, so why not just forward that on directly? This is fine if the prelude is necessary or useful for the client to see, but if you have been moaning or revealing information that is not suitable for their eyes, make sure that you either edit the thread or, better yet, start from scratch. It’s like making sure you have actually hung up before saying something on the phone that the respondent shouldn’t hear.
8. Keep pictures and signatures to a reasonable size.
Pictures and small graphics in signatures can be appealing, but they don’t need to take up the whole email. Aside from making emails larger, they can be distracting and affect the overall formatting in a way that makes the actual text difficult to follow. If you paste a screenshot, make sure you resize it first to make it fit nicely into the body of the email, eliminating any unnecessary elements. Same goes for the signature – try creating different versions for different recipients rather than putting all of your social media icons and the logos of all of the clients you’ve ever worked with into one monster signature.
Bear in mind that too many images may lead to your email being marked as spam, while any recipient who sees the plain text version will probably not see the images at all.
9. Don’t forget the attachment.
If you say that you’re attaching a file, remember to attach it! There’s nothing quite as embarrassing as having to respond to a "Thank you John, but the attachment appears to be missing."
Oh, right…
10. Proofread, proofread, proofread.
It applies to professional documents, and it is no different for professional communications. Bad spelling and grammar give the impression that you don’t consider the email (and by extension the recipient) important enough to dedicate a few minutes to reading it over. Most email programs even have in-built spellcheckers, so there is really no excuse.
And don’t forget the person’s name! You’d be surprised at how easily your brain substitutes Carina with Catriona without you realising.