Email Do's and Don'ts

"Kaunsi Baat Kahan Kaise Kahin Jaati Hai Yeh Saleeqa Ho To Harr Baat Suni Jaati Hai" [Waseem Barelvi]

Above is a urdu couplet which roughly means: You’ll surely be heard if you know what to say when and how. A lot of communication we do today is via email. Your email mannerisms have the potential to sabotage your reputation both personally and professionally. I’ve compiled a short list of do’s and don’ts that will help you look professional and get your message across.

The Do’s:

1. Carefully read your message before you press the send button.
2. Make your subject descriptive and action-oriented. For example: Bid Team: Please issue Request for Quotations, where Bid Team is the name of the group, and Please issue is the action.
3. Change the subject of the message if the topic of conversation changes.
4. Keep all messages short and to the point.
5. Bold people’s name when asking questions. For example: Shajan: What is the status of project?
6. Limit the number of people to whom you send a message to those who need to read it.
7. Put people who need to respond or take action on the To line and people who need to be informed on the Cc line.
8. Acknowledge messages that require a more extensive reply. If you are too busy to reply with a full answer right away, let the sender know that you are looking into the issue and will respond by certain time or date (also add a reminder for yourself).
9. If you are asking a question and there are several people who could respond, choose just one person rather than sending your query to the whole group.
10. Email isn’t always an effective medium for resolving complex issues. If you are on an email conversation that has more than 10 messages without a resolution, consider setting up a meeting.

The Don’ts:

1. Don’t send a message when you are upset or angry.
2. Don’t leave your Subject: field blank. Your message may be misidentified as spam. Always take time to write a concise and accurate description of your message.
3. Don’t use a previous message to type about something new and leave the old unrelated Subject in place.
4. Don’t expect a quick response when sending long messages (more than two paragraphs).
5. Don’t use ALL CAPS. Don’t use fonts that are hard to read. Don’t use red fonts - they can be interpreted as being critical. Don’t use sarcasm - your humor might be misunderstood.
6. Don’t include your manager on every message you send.
7. Don’t use Bcc (blind carbon copy) to let a third party (such as your manager) know about a sensitive message. The Bcc recipient might not realize that he or she has received a Bcc and might respond to everyone, exposing that he or she received a Bcc message. This might come across as sneaky behavior on your part. (Use Bcc only to remove extra people from conversation when you think that they no longer need the extra email).
8. Don’t write something you wouldn’t want everyone in your company to read. You never know  where your message might end up.
9. Don’t expand distribution lists. Expanding distribution lists makes messages harder to read and causes them to get diverted into wrong mail folders for people using rules.
10. Don’t send attachments - send links instead. This rule applies especially to meeting requests, where attachments can contribute significantly to server quotas.