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Tips for Using E-Mail

Kitty O. Locker, in Business and Administrative Communication (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1997: 155-158) offers sound advice about the use of e-mail. Below is a summary of this advice.

• Remember that e-mail is not private; your employer has the right to read your messages, and anyone with whom you correspond can easily forward your message to others.
• Subject lines in e-mail are very important since the reader can at first see only the subject line and not the text.  Be specific, succinct, and informative.
• While e-mail is less formal than letters, all conventions of good writing still apply. Use correct grammar and mechanics, including punctuation and appropriate capital letters.
• Except to emphasize a word or two, avoid using full caps, as doing so is the electronic equivalent to shouting.
• Put the reader’s name at the beginning of the message to provide a friendly tone.
• Complimentary closes (such as "sincerely" or "very truly yours") are not necessary in an e-mail message, but do close with your name since some e-mail programs automatically delete the header on screen.
• Since e-mail usually strips formatting (bullets, underlining, italics, indention, etc.), use vertical spacing for visual appeal.
• When responding to a message, delete the original message except the part to which you are responding, and put your response above the original text.

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