Writing emails. You either love it or you hate it and there’s rarely an in-between. If you’re friends with me, you’ve probably watched (and listened to) me struggle for over half an hour over a one-paragraph email replying to another. Honestly some of them might seem trivial, but I know I’m not alone! I’ve helped some of my friends with the very same problems. Here are six things I struggle with when writing an email.
1. Introductions
Sometimes I can spend forever on an email simply because I don’t know how to start it, especially when I don’t know them. Do I start off with: “Dear Dr. ______,” or “Hello Dr. ______,” or “Hi Dr. _______,” or “Hey Dr. _________,” or simply “Dr. _______,” or “Yo, Teach,”?
There’s nothing worse than seeming too informal when sending out job applications—but still, I want to stand out from all the other “Dear Mr.” Stick-In-The-Muds. The simple answer to this dilemma is, “It depends.” How well do I know the person and how serious is the matter of the email? I’m sure there’s an XY-graph showing a positive correlation to how you would start the email based on those criteria ranging from “To whom it may concern” to no name at all. Worst comes to worse, just say “Mr./Ms. [insert last name here],”. It can’t go wrong.
2. The Subject Line
I don’t title my papers until I finish them and I don’t add a subject line until I finish my email. There’s an art to subject line writing that people won’t click on and doesn’t seem awkward and I have not mastered it at all. Today I literally sat at my desk for five minutes before throwing my hands up in the air and exclaiming, “Can someone title this email for me?” I have never been great at naming stories I wrote as a child, and I’m sure the trait has developed into the adult version of that. The best I can offer is to be straight to the point and don’t be vague—clickbait them with key words that stand out and you will succeed.
3. Responding in a Timely Fashion
I am super guilty of starting replies right away and finally sending them three weeks later. I have three different email accounts that I keep track of for school and work. Frequently I’ll start an email for one thing and get distracted by an email for another thing and completely forget about the first one. Repeat ad nauseam. Really the only way to fix this is to stop having the attention span of an e-squirrel and finish the email before skipping over to the next one. For those of you who like a visual aid, here’s a graph of advised email response times:
4. Brevity
I have a rambling problem—you may or may not have picked up on this if you’re a regular visitor to my blog. Try not to write emails as if you’re talking to the person in question. Get to the point and make it as simple as possible for your recipient to read them. Just like no one wants to read the 20 page article their teacher assigned them, no one wants to read a novel you pushed into their inbox. Treat it like a tweet. Get to the point and make it sweet.
5. Punctuation
I recently set a New Year’s resolution to limit myself to only one exclamation point per email because I have a habit of sprinkling them throughout my message**. When I dictate an email in my mind as I’m typing it, they sound bright and cheerful and to me, periods make sentences sound dull and boring. The problem with this is that not everyone reads exclamation points as indicators of excitement and can think I’m yelling at them instead. Keeping it straight-forward with as many periods as possible and question marks only when it’s a question and not when there’s intonation in your silently dictated statement can make all the difference.
6. And Signing Off…
Sometimes an email will come easy to me. Everything will flow. All you have to say is perfect. But signing off is just damn near impossible. Do you say “Sincerely”? “Cheers”? Just your name? I used to always struggle with this because I hate saying “sincerely.” It feels cheap and overused every time. Eventually I started ending all my emails with “Best,” because it sounded polite and genuine and it felt like a nod to myself and how self-confident I felt. It just works better that way.
Best (because I am the best),
Tai Coates
I’ve come to accept that writing emails is just one of those “adult-skills” I’ll eventually master with plenty of practice (and sweat, and tears.) In the meantime, get used to me proof-reading my email extensively until I hit ‘send.’
((** This blog post was written with only one exclamation point.))
TJ Digital Creative 