Do you remember the first time you got connected to the Net? If you were like me, you searched and searched most of the night and day, exploring all these wonderful sites. I was a very shy user at first. I wouldn't dream of posting a message in a forum or joining in a chat. I was even afraid to send an email. I had this greatest fear of looking like a newbie or showing poor Netiquette. With my job, more correspondence started to take place by email so I researched some pointers in order to exercise a greater degree of professionalism.
With email, you have to remember that the other person cannot see your facial expressions or hear your tone of voice so it's important to write your email carefully. You are also judged on your spelling and grammar. I would like to share with you some guidelines and hints in order to help you write more professional email...
- Keep your messages brief. Bear in mind that some people receive hundreds of emails a day so a long message just bogs them down.
- Do not use excessive punctuation. The worst one is using multiple exclamation points!!!!!!!
- If your email software does not have a word-wrapping feature (i.e. automatically starts a new line after a certain number of characters are reached), use 80 characters per line as a guide.
- Although HTML format is nice for colors or fancy fonts, some email programs cannot handle this format. The recipient of your message may end up with a lot of gibberish on his/her screen. It's safer to use plain text.
- Keep the use of abbreviations to a minimum. The reader may not understand some of the abbreviations we use in chat rooms, such as BCNU or ROTFL. There are two safe abbreviations that are widely accepted in business correspondence and they are FYI (for your information) and BTW (by the way).
- Smilies (use of characters) were invented to make up for facial expressions not seen by the reader. Accepted characters are a smiley face :-) or a sad face :-( or a wink ;-). Use only the common ones because a lot of readers do not understand the lesser known ones like "wears lipstick" : -{}
- Don't use UPPER CASE for your message. This is considered shouting and is very offensive.
- Use proper grammar and spelling. If your email program has a spell checker, please use it. You are being judged by your writing skills. Many people are turned off by poor grammar and spelling.
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