How to write a decent e-mail.
Posted Thursday, October 13th 2005
I bet most of you, if not all of you, have received and e-mail which is so incoherent and so hard to read, that you wanted to delete it altogether, then find the person who sent it to you, and strangle him/her. I get e-mails like that on a regular basis, and a while ago, I wrote a list of guidelines for writing a readable and coherent email. Unfortunately, I never wrote it in English, and I never fully completed it.
Just to get it out of the way - this is not a guide that will show you how to write a formal e-mail, but it’ll get you close. In order to write a formal e-mail, you need to have some common sense, and these guidelines will probably help you too. I’m not writing this to put anyone down. I’m simply writing it so I can point people to this guide when I get an e-mail that leaves me scratching my head.
1. Paragraphs
It’s very important that you separate your thoughts in paragraphs. When I receive an e-mail which is two pages long, and consists of one single paragraph, I feel like crying. E-mails that consist of one paragraph are extremely hard to read, especially if you use a very tiny text size (more on that later. Separating your e-mail in paragraphs not only makes it easier for the recipient to read it, but it’s also easier to reply.
2. Punctuation
Hey man what’s up I saw your car on the street the other day looks good yellow too I had chicken for lunch yesterday it was good and then I had a lot of beer and then passed out.
See what I mean? Stuff like that is hard to read. Dots, comas, exclamation points and question marks - they all exist for a reason. Use them, and try to use them in their correct place. This however, does not allow you to overdo it. For most things, one or in extreme cases, two question marks will do. Same goes for exclamation points.
3. Capitalization
Similar to punctuation, using a capital letter on the beginning of EVERY sentence is crucial. Please do it.
4. CAPS LOCK
HEY THIS IS AWESOME.
No. No it’s not. Please don’t do it. It’s one of the most annoying things ever. It also shows that you’re probably mentally underdeveloped and that you have some sort of weird fetish regarding the Caps Lock key.
5. Text Size
Choosing a good text size when writing your emails might seem trivial, but it’s also very important. You don’t want text that is too small, or too big. Too small makes it hard to read, while too big makes it inefficient and annoying. If you’re using Arial, Tahoma or Verdana when you’re sending e-mails (which I recommend, as they’re all good looking fonts), try to use some decent size.
6. Text Color
Text color might seem trivial to you, and you might think that having your text in 14 different colors is fun and pretty, but believe me, it’s not. It’s annoying, distracting and a bit stupid. Keep it simple, black on white, and everyone will be happy. If you have to use some color in your e-mail, to specify something or to add importance to some part, use color rationally and don’t overdo it.
7. Coherence
Before you sit down to write an e-mail, as short as it might be, think of most things you want to say in the e-mail, and try to structure them in your head. Hopping from one thing to another, then back is distracting and makes your e-mails look erratic.
8. Forwarding
Although I really really hate chain e-mails (and pretty much everyone I know does too), if you have to forward me something that you think is cool, at least clean it up before you do. I really don’t want to know who got the e-mail before I do, nor do I want to see the thousands of ‘>>’ characters added by default when forwarding e-mails. Take a few minutes to clean up whatever you’re about to forward. The person that gets it will appreciate it.
That’s it, basically. Feel free to pass this on to all your friends and relatives that you feel need some help when writing an e-mail. Any comments and suggestions are welcome, and I’d be glad to add those suggestions in the list.
