How to write an e-mail

1. Communications Studies and Personal Development
- Damian Gordon -
How to write an e-mail

2. How to write an e-mail
•Writing e-mails is a skill
•It takes practice
•With email, you can't assume anything
about a sender's location, time, frame of
mind, profession, interests, or future value
to you. This means, among other things,
that you need to be very, very careful
about giving your receivers some context.

3. How to write an e-mail
Subject Lines
Need help with timetable
Re: Need help with timetable
Fwd: Need help with timetable
URGENT: Need help with timetable
REQ: Need help with timetable
FYI: Need help with timetable

4. How to write an e-mail
Mr./Ms. [Full name],
[Body of e-mail].
Regards,
Your name
Student Number
DT211/1

5. How to write an e-mail
Quoting an e-mail
> I am e-mailing you to request if you
> you have finished it
yes

6. How to write an e-mail
Change pronouns
> I am e-mailing you to request if you
> you have finished [the assignment]
yes

7. How to write an e-mail
•Short Paragraphs
–Frequently email messages will be read in a
document window with scrollbars. While
scrollbars are nice, it makes it harder to
visually track long paragraphs. Consider
breaking up your paragraphs to only a few
sentences apiece.

8. How to write an e-mail
•Line Length
–Some mail clients do not automatically wrap
(adjust what words go on what line). This
means that if there is a mismatch between
your client's and your correspondent's in how
they wrap lines, your correspondent may end
up with a message that looks messy.

9. How to write an e-mail
•Line Length
–You should try to keep your lines under sixty
characters long. This is to leave a little room
for the indentation or quote marks your
correspondents may want if they need to
quote pieces of your message in their replies.

10. How to write an e-mail
•Smileys
–A facial gestures can be represented with
what is called a "smiley": a textual drawing of
a facial expression. The most common are;
:-)
;-)
:-(

11. How to write an e-mail
•Language
–The biggest status cue is your competence
with the language.

12. How to write an e-mail
•Language
–If you have lots of misspellings, your subjects
do not agree with your verbs, or you use the
wrong word, people may assume that you are
uneducated. From that, they may infer that
you are not very clever. It doesn't matter that
the correlation between language ability and
intelligence is weak (especially among non-
native speakers); lots of people will make that
inference anyway.

13. How to write an e-mail
•Language
–Furthermore, some people are literally
insulted by getting email with errors,
especially typographical errors. They feel that
it is disrespectful to send email with blatant
errors. (Note that you can use this to your
advantage. If you want to flaunt your superior
status, you can insert some typos
deliberately.)

14. How to write an e-mail
•Acronyms
–BTW - By The Way
–FYI - For Your Information
–IMHO - In My Humble/Honest Opinion
–RTFM - Read The Manual ("Manual" here refers to any documentation)
–LOL - [I] Laughed Out Loud [at what you wrote]
–RSN - Real Soon Now
–ROTFL - [I am] Rolling On The Floor Laughing [at what you wrote]
•These are less common, but show up occasionally:
–TTFN - Ta-Ta For Now
–TIA - Thanks In Advance (also sometimes written advTHANKSance)