Professionals can benefit immensely if they improve email etiquette. However, it may seem confusing at times. As a result of a number of email etiquette rules. For instance, people often get confused when to ‘reply’ and when to ‘reply-all.’ We are here to help you with that with some simple tips to ace your email skills.
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Email etiquette definition
Email etiquette is a code of behavior that appears polite towards the recipients of the mail and upholds a sense of professionalism.
To clarify, there is no academic definition of this word, but it represents an idea. Over a period of time, certain ways of communicating have developed and are considered widely accepted. These are sometimes misrepresented as rules but the correct term should be convention. One should also note that there are significant variations between different social groups, organizations, and nationalities.
Is it really that important?
Let’s face it: we are in 2020, still email remains one of the important modes of communication. At least for business puposes. However, it is also a highly vulnerable channel of conversation.
Firstly, it is formal. Nevertheless, you need to ensure you don’t sound too impersonal. This fine balance can be easily broken if you don’t follow proper etiquette in your mails.
Secondly, it reflects your ‘brand’. The brand could be your company, organization, social group, or even your personality. Everything is at stake. One typo here and there is still fine in this age of smartphone keyboards but an unnecessary emoji can tarnish your image instantly.
Thirdly, some organizations have strict policies regarding emails. You must ensure you adhere to the generally accepted practices as well as your organizations.
8 Easy ways to improve your email etiquette
The ‘to’ feild
This innocous looking part of an email can have some significance too!
Firstly, some mails have multiple recipients. Always remember to keep the most important recipient as a person in the ‘to’ field. If you want to address multiple people, keep all of them in CC. For example: if you want to invite four of your team members for a brainstorming session, you may address all of them in CC.
Secondly, never include people in the ‘to’ if they are just added in the loop for reference or have a peripheral role in the topic of the mail. For example, in a mail for application for leave, you should only keep your reporting manager in the ‘to’ while you may keep their boss(es) in the CC field as required. It would immediately help them know that they don’t need to take any action upon your mail. It saves people a lot of time.
The ‘cc’ field
Firstly, one should know that the CC field signifies ‘carbon copy’. All the recipients of the mail, who are marked in CC, can see whom the mail has been addressed to, they can also see who have been marked in CC.
This option is used when you wish to inform people publicly. People need not reply or ‘take action’ unless they are specifically asked to.
In a CC’d mail, if you address most of the mail to person A. However, you want a small piece of action or reply from person B, who is marked in CC, then you could use @B to elicit a reply.
The replies from CC’d people could either be visible to everyone(if they reply all) or visible only to the sender if they select ‘reply’
The ‘bcc’ field
BCC stands for Blind Carbon Copy. Blind in the sense that the recipients would not know who are the other recipients in your mail.
The recipients can only reply to the sender. They cannot reply-all.
When to use : Use BCC to maintain privacy. For example : you want to forward a non official mail to some of your collgues who do not know each other.
When not to use: Never use BCC feature to block out someone from mail-chain> Never keep team-members in BCC when it matters to them to know that who all are part of the mail.
Email subject line
Subject line is one the most common places to improve your email etiquette. It is well known that most people read only the subject and few read the content inside!
| 3 things to remember |
|---|
| Avoid vagueness |
| Be short (follow the 60 characters or 6 words rule) |
| Minimize the need of opening mail: “Meeting venue changed to N504” |
| Common acronyms | Meaning |
|---|---|
| NNTO | No Need To Open |
| OOO | Out of Office |
| NRN | No Reply Neccesary |
| LET | Leavin Early Today |
| Y/N | Only Yes or No reply is required |
| EOD, EOW, EOM, EOY | End of Day, Week, Month , Year |
| FYI | For Your Information |
| FYA | For Your Assignment |
Greetings
If you simply use Hi, you are good to go.
However, salutations or greetings could be misinterpreted in some cultures. At times they may sound funny as well. One of the craziest greetings I found was from seller at Aliexpress who greeted with “My dear prince/princess”. Although,it could be pretty normal in China to use this kind of greeting!
Simply keep in mind that most widely accepted salutation for all kinds of communication is ‘Hi’ or ‘Hello.’ However, in some specific contexts, you may use local variations. If you know the name you may include as ‘Dear Samantha’ or ‘Hi Anita.’
Email Etiquette rules for mail body
Before writing the body of the mail, you should have the purpose of the mail very clear in your head. Firstly, you must be sure that what exactly you want to communicate. Secondly, you must ensure that you know how you want your recipients to respond – replying, taking action, etc.
Here are some tips for improving the body of the mail:
- It is a good idea to summarize your entire mail’s positioning and objective in 1-2 lines in the very beginning. Your readers may have a very short attention span and it helps if they decide fast whether to read further or not!
- Alternatively, you may begin with a thank you note.
- Refrain from using ALL CAPS as it sounds very shouty.
- Another way to improve your email etiquette is by using a professional font in your email. It is a good practice to use sans-serif fonts as they are more screen-friendly
- Keep your font size above 12 to make it more readable
- You can use a 1.5 to 2.0 line spacing to improve readability
- Use shorter sentences
- Try to write in the active voice.
- Ensure that you don’t have any spelling or grammatical mistakes by installing apps like Grammarly.
- Certainly use transition words to have a soothing flow of thoughts from one sentence to another.
Etiquette for ppt and pdf
It is very important to give a thought to any file you attach to the mails. This is especially true for the presentations and the PDF documents.
Ensure that you use ‘image compression’ option in pdf or select ‘minimum size.’ This would take up much less space in the inbox of the receiver. It would also ensure that mobile users may download your file easily.
When you save PPTs for sharing, follow the email etiquette for ppt. Firstly, save the files as PPTX as it has smaller filesize. Similarly, set DPI to 72 or use image compression option while saving PPTX files. You will be amazed by the difference in file sizes.
You can also save PPTs as PDFs and share. It is a good practice as the position of text and images is best preserved in PDFs. Secondly, if you use specific fonts, the presentation may look awkward with replaced fonts.
Mind your response time
Originally, emails were supposed to be a medium of contact where the respondent could take their own sweet time and respond. As a result, it was analogous to the snail mail with somewhat faster response time.
However, at present, we have emails in our pockets and expectancy has been shorter than before. According to a study, 50% of the responses were sent within an hour while the most frequent response time was within two minutes.
The expected response time would depend on a lot of factors like expectancy, work culture. However, inside an organization, about 70% of people expect a reply within four hours and 30% expect within an hour.
Email-etiquette for professionals
- Be specific, short and to the point
- Follow proper email etiquette for cc, bcc and to fields
- Use reply-all feature when expected and don’t use it when you want to reply to an individual
- Give people an appropriate time to reply back.
- When your co-worker is working from home, think twice before sending out a mail.
Etiquette tips for students
- First of all, create and use a formal email address. The first impression is very important.
- If you cannot find a username with Google. try some other email services. There are plenty of them.
- Be polite, specific and clear about your points
- Avoid ingratiatory language
- Try to use an online ’email signature designer’ to create a professional-looking email signature.
- However, if you don’t have an email signature, at least provide complete details about your name, roll number, class, and course name.
- Be patient for a reply and send a ‘gentle-reminder’ when you believe that it is the right time for the same.
- Also, understand that to improve email etiquette, it would take quite some time. Be a patient learner and observe others’ emails very carefully. Pick up the best practices!
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