Email Tips You Can Use

By Dr. Barrett Mosbacker

June 23, 2010

I recently came across an article published by Microsoft containing useful email tips. I have slightly modified them and am publishing them here in the hope that they may be helpful to you.

The Dos

The following rules will help you look professional and get your message across.

• Read your message before you send it.
• Always include a subject in the subject line.
• Make your subject descriptive and action-oriented. For example: “UCEF: Please send your Board Retreat Dates,” where UCEF is the name of the group and “Please send…” is the action. Other useful prefixes include “FYI:” and “Action Required.”
• If action is required, state what you want on the subject line.
• Change the subject of the message if the topic of the conversation changes.
• Keep all messages short and to the point.
• Organize the content of your message from most important to least important.
• Consider bolding important information.
• Put action items or questions on separate lines so that they stand out and get noticed.
• Bold people’s names when asking questions. For example: “Ryan: What is the status of the project?”
• Limit the number of recipients to those who need to read the message.
• Put people who need to be informed on the Cc line.
• Put people who need to respond or take action on the To line.
• Use a signature when appropriate, but keep it simple, short, professional, and free of graphics.
• If you want an immediate response, do not send an email. Phone or send an instant message instead.
• If an email conversation exceeds ten messages without resolution, consider calling or scheduling a meeting to discuss the issue. Email is not always an efficient medium for resolving complex issues.
• Acknowledge messages that require a more extensive response. If you are too busy to respond fully right away, let the sender know that you are looking into the issue and will respond by a certain time or date. Flag it for yourself as a reminder.
• Use the High Importance flag sparingly.
• Note: Even if you have set up the delayed send rule, marking a message with High Importance will cause it to be sent immediately.
• If you are asking a question and several people could respond, address it to just one person rather than sending it to a group.
• The key to writing good email is to empathize with your recipients.

Follow Up: Flagging on Send

When you are sending a message to someone from whom you need a response, do the following:

• Flag it for yourself on send.
• Change the name of the flagged email task in the To-Do Bar to start with “Follow Up.”
• Mark it with the @Waiting category.
• When you take these three steps, you know that your next action is to send another message or look for a response.

Tip: Reminding yourself to send another message is often more effective than flagging the message for your recipient. Similarly, when you promise to do something in a message, flag it for yourself so that you have a task in your To-Do Bar to remind you.

The Don’ts

• Do not use stationery.
• Do not copy your manager on every message you send.
• Do not send a message when you are angry. Write it, save it to your drafts folder, and come back to it later.
• Do not expect a quick response when sending long messages — more than two paragraphs.
• Do not send a follow-up message less than a day after the first. If you do not hear back in a timely manner, use the phone or instant messaging instead.
• Do not use read receipts or delivery receipts on every message you send. Use them only if you are unsure whether your recipients will receive the message.
• Do not flag every message you send as high priority. Your recipients will learn to ignore such flags.
• Do not use ALL CAPS.
• Do not send large attachments. This rule applies especially to meeting requests, where attachments can contribute significantly to your server quota and your recipients’.
• Do not expand distribution lists. Doing so makes messages harder to read and causes them to go into the wrong mail folders.
• Do not use sarcasm. Your humor may be misunderstood.
• Do not write something you would not want everyone in the school to read. You never know where your email might end up.
• Do not use cursive or novelty fonts that are hard to read.
• Do not use red fonts; they are hard to read and can be interpreted as critical.
• Do not reply to all on a distribution list asking to be removed. Ever.

Rules for Distribution Lists

• If you are responding to a large distribution list, follow all of the email dos and don’ts.
• If you need more information or are investigating the issue separately, respond to the whole distribution list to let everyone know that you are handling it, then reply to the individual separately. When the issue is resolved, respond to the distribution list with the resolution so that others on the list can reference it.

How to Redirect People

If someone sends a message to a distribution list of which you are a member, and the message would be better answered by someone else or another distribution list, do the following:

• Reply with the correct distribution list or person on the To line.
• Have replies sent to the correct distribution list or person.
• Do not put the original distribution list on the Bcc line, because your message will not be filtered by other people’s rules. Instead, leave the distribution list on the To or Cc line.

How to Be Removed from a Distribution List

If you receive mail from a distribution list you do not want to be on, send a message to your network administrator or to the owner of the distribution list and ask to be removed. Do not reply to the whole list. To find the list owner, double-click the distribution list name.

How to Use Inline Comments

Adding inline comments to email you receive is a convenient way to answer questions and respond directly to issues. Best practice includes the following:

• In your message, note that you are commenting inline. For example, include “See additional comments below.”
• Differentiate your text from the original message. Some options include:
  • Changing the font color
  • Prepending your name or initials in brackets, for example, [Melissa] or [MM]
  • Changing the font to italic, bold, or both
• Do not delete anything you did not write.

When to Use Bcc

• Use the Bcc feature to remove extra recipients from an email conversation when they no longer need to follow it or when the topic has changed.
• For example, if you are one of five people who receive a question and you want to answer it, move the other four to the Bcc line and note something like: “Bcc’ing Joe, Jeff, James, and Jennifer. Here is the answer…” Future messages will then be between only you and the original sender.
• Do not use Bcc to inform a third party, such as your manager, of a sensitive message. The Bcc recipient may not realize he or she was blind-copied and may reply to everyone, revealing that fact. This can appear dishonest on your part.
• Rather than using Bcc to inform a third party of an issue, forward the message after you send it.