E-mail: A Write It Well Guide by Janis Fisher
Planning An E-Mail Message
To plan a clear, concise e-mail that gets the results you want, answer these questions:
Why are you writing this e-mail? What’s your primary purpose?
Who’s your audience? What’s your reader’s point of view? How will the reader use this information?
What’s the main point? If you had only 15 seconds to get the most important message across, what would you say?
What information should you include? What are your reader’s most likely questions?
What’s the best way to organize the information?
Deciding When To Use E-Mail
Is your primary reason for writing to pass on information or ask a question? If so, use e-mail.
Do you need to convey the same message efficiently to a group? Use e-mail.
Do you need a written record to document the exchange of information? If so, use e-mail.
Do you have a quick question that you need answered right away? Is the other person nearby or easily reached by phone? Take a walk down the hall or make a phone call.
Is the content of your message personal? Deliver the message in person or on the phone.
Do you need to convey confidential information? Communicate the information in person, on the phone
Do you want to discuss an issue or get support for an idea? Hold a meeting or make a conference call.
Have you already tried to work on this issue by e-mail without success? Meet in person or on the phone.
Do you need to send a detailed report, statistics or budget figures, or other complex information? Send the information as an attachment, with a cover e-mail that describes it and summarizes the key points.
Clarifying Your Most Important Message?
Are you sending someone a document? What are you sending and why?
Do you want to get support for an idea or a course of action? What is the idea or course of action? The key benefit?
Do you want to make your opinion known? What is your opinion?
When you have trouble organizing the content of an e-mail
Did you jump right into the writing without thinking carefully about your purpose, audience, main point, and the reader’s most likely questions? If so, go back to the planning process.
Are you writing to multiple readers who have widely different needs? Consider writing separate messages to each group.
Do you have several unrelated messages to convey? Consider sending separate messages on each topic. Otherwise, break down the e-mail into sections, one for each topic, with an introductory paragraph that lists them all.
Do you have more than one purpose? Do you want to inform and to influence? Try to focus on one primary purpose.
Did you add any information that is not clearly related to the main point? Did you begin on one topic, then shift to another? If you did, go back to the planning process.
Are you trying to say too much? Make sure you’ve thought carefully about your reader’s most likely questions and what information your reader needs.
Checking Your E-Mail Before Sending
Does the message make sense? Is the main point clear and at the beginning? Is the content organized logically and clearly related to the main point? Have you answered your reader’s most likely questions?
Is there any unnecessary information? Is any information missing?
Is the tone appropriate?
Does the e-mail present a professional image of you and your organization? Is the language active, concise and specific? Is the message written in plain English? Have you used jargon or technical terms that the reader might not understand? Are there any grammar, punctuation, or spelling errors?
Does the subject line accurately describe the content? Does it include any words or phrases that could land the message in a spam folder?
Have you addressed the e-mail to everyone who needs the information? To anyone who doesn’t need it?
Using Lists In E-Mail Messages
Keep lists short
Introduce the list
Keep the list parallel in form
Use blank space to separate items that are more than one line long
Be consistent with initial capitalization and end punctuation
Identifying The Right Recipients
Do they have the answers to the questions you’re asking?
Have they asked for the information you’re sending?
Do they need to know that you want or need something done?
Will they make a decision or take action, based on the information you’re sending?
Is there a valid reason to keep them “in the loop”— informed about what’s going on?
Controlling Your E-Mail Habit
Unless you’re expecting something important, check your e-mail only at certain times
If you need to concentrate on something, remove yourself from temptation by working away from your computer or working off line
Use these strategies for reducing the volume of mail that lands in your inbox
Direct e-mail newsletters and similar messages to a separate folder
Set up a separate mailbox when you expect a lot of mail on a specific topic
Managing Your Saved E-Mail
Set up folders that reflect the work you do and label the folders so you can tell at a glance what’s in them
Review your saved-messages folders periodically to delete messages you no longer need and archive those you can’t delete but no longer need at hand
Edit messages before saving them to delete unnecessary content
Learning More About Communicating In Writing
Assess your writing. Schedule time every few weeks to reread some of your recent e-mail messages and other documents you’ve written, using the checklists in this book as a guide for assessing your writing.
It can also be helpful to read your writing aloud to get a sense of the tone and see whether the sentences and paragraphs flow smoothly.
Look at what you’ve written from the reader’s point of view to make sure that you’ve used the right tone, gotten the main point across clearly, answered all the reader’s questions, organized the information logically, and presented the information so it is easy to read.
Be observant. You can learn a lot from paying attention to other people’s writing. When you read something that seems very easy to understand or very difficult to follow, ask yourself what the writer did that made the writing work or what the writer should have done differently.
