Thursday, October 25, 2007

Refresher on email Etiquettes

Here are some points on email etiquettes that will definitely help.


1) The font of mail should be Verdana and font size should be 9.5 or 10.

2) The mail should have a Pyramid Structure i.e. it should contain:
* Situation: What's the current situation is
* Action items: What you expect from the reader of the mail to-do
* Information: The information you want to give to the reader
* Conclusion: Conclude with a Thank You.

3) For writing use only Black or Blue color. For highlighting purpose make the word bold. Avoid using Red color as Red signifies danger, so use it when urgent.

4) For greetings in mail:
* For Americans: use Hi
* For Europeans: use Hello
* For Asians: use Dear

To be more formal we could use Dear Mr. /Ms. followed by Last name or Full name. We should not use Dear Mr. /Ms. followed by First name alone.

5) We should not put '/' in greetings like Hi X/Y. Instead we should say Hi X and Y.

6) We should not use 'Thanks and Regards'. Instead we should say:

Thank you
Regards


7) For requesting something we should not use can, instead we should use could.

8) We should not write 'Please find the attached file' because the reader does not have to find or search for the file in the mail it's already there. So instead we should write
'The file has been attached for your reference'.

9) We should not use sentences like 'As per your mail' because 'per' is used only with units like per Kg etc. Instead we should write 'According to your mail'.

10) We should use parallel structure. Parallelism enables readers to read documents more efficiently. For e.g . The analysis will include planning, organizing, dividing and assessment
(Instead assessment we should write Assessing) of turnaround functions.

11) In our mails we often write 'Please revert back'. Instead we should only write 'Please revert'.

12) For the Signature in mail, if we are sending to people in our company only then we should not write our company name in the signature because they already know that we are part of the same company but if we are sending mail to an external party like client etc then we should write our company name in the signature because there we have to brand our company name in front of others.

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