Office etiquette has been established for quite a few years now, but email etiquette isn’t quite as cut and dry. In the age of technology, convenience sometimes causes people to take a more lax approach to emails, even in the office. You should remember, especially at work, how you say something is just as important as what you have to say. If you are questioning some of your work email word choices, here’s a handy guide you can follow so you’ll never again make an email faux pas.
DO:
Personalize.
You should get in the habit of addressing every email you send with “Mr./Mrs. So-and-so,” just as you would in a face-to-face conversation. At the very least, greet the person with a “Hello” instead of simply jumping into the body of the email.
Double-check.
Always, always, always proofread your emails. Gmail may have just launched the “unsend” option, but not every email provider offers that luxury. You don’t want to catch a missing word or grammatical blunder mere seconds after you hit the send button.
Get to the point.
Emails do not require fluff. You want to be as efficient as possible in the workplace, so don’t force your co-workers/boss to waste precious time reading your novel-length email about something that could have been said in two sentences.
Be polite.
Emails can be easily misunderstood since there is no nonverbal communication involved, so you need to make the effort to be obviously friendly. “Hi Joe, I noticed I don’t have your report yet. Is everything going alright?” sounds much better than “Your report is three days late. Why haven’t you sent it to me?”
Respond in a timely manner.
You don’t have to drop everything you’re doing to answer an email as soon as you get it, but don’t leave that person waiting either. If you can, try to respond within an hour so they aren’t waiting on you all day to complete the task at hand.
DON’T:
Use emojis.
There is a time and place to use emojis, but work emails isn’t one of them. It may be tempting to add a “:)” to the end of a friendly, casual email, but you should resist that temptation. Emojis are unprofessional and too laid-back for the office, so keep the smiley/frowny faces for when you’re making weekend plans with friends.
Send one-word responses.
You know you don’t like receiving only a “Yes,” “No,” or “Thanks” when you type out a thoughtful email, and other people don’t either. They took the time to send you a complete email, so it’s common courtesy to type out at least a sentence or two.
Use “Reply All.”
Unless you have new information that really needs to be shared with everyone in the group, just reply to the one person you want to talk to. You don’t want to clog up everyone else’s inboxes with multiple emails that don’t apply to them.
Use exclamation points.
If you’re going to use them, use them sparingly...like once per email. At most. Exclamation points tend to distract the reader from the point of the email, which is the last thing you want since you’re usually discussing something important.
Discuss private matters.
You may be close friends with some of your co-workers, and that’s perfectly fine - but that doesn’t mean you have the freedom to talk about your getaway to Vegas on your work email. These emails can always be looked into by your company, so you don’t want them to think you’re wasting company time.
