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Introduction

This article provides some tips on how to write effective emails in a professional environment. I have accumulated these tips through my experiences with writing emails to colleagues, professors, and employers over the past few years. They are most applicable to emails for work or school; they might not be too relevant for casual personal emails that you send to your friends.

Tip 0: Should you even be emailing this person?

Before you write an email, especially to a person of some authority whom you’ve never contacted before, think about whether it is appropriate to contact this person at this time. Read his/her website to see if there is an FAQ that might answer your question, whether his/her assistant might be able to help you out, or whether he/she has an explicit “don’t email me” policy. The example that I can think of off the top of my head is related to professors: If you are applying to graduate school, do NOT email professors at that school to tell them about how enthusiastic you are about their research (in the hopes of boosting your chances for admissions). Pretty much everyone hates those emails and dismisses them as garbage.

Tip 1: Make the subject line clear and concise

When someone scans through new email, the only thing he/she initially reads is the subject line, so make sure that it clearly summarizes your email’s intentions. Don’t have the subject be “Hi” or “Hello there” unless the purpose of your email is to simply say hello, and even if it is just to say hello, make the subject a bit more descriptive, like “Hello from an old classmate”. Remember to keep it short, though, because you never know how wide the text display on the person’s email reader is — long subject lines will get truncated.When you are replying to someone’s email, your email program will probably prepend “Re:” onto the subject line (e.g., “Re: Deadline reminder”). If this is the first reply, then that subject is adequate. However, if you are on the second, third, or subsequent reply, your message might slightly stray off the original topic, so it’s good form to edit the subject line by putting the original in brackets and prepending an updated subject in front of it (e.g., “Also, don’t forget X! [Re: Deadline reminder]”). This way, you will still remind the reader of the original thread topic while providing some new information.

If your reply is not relevant at all to the subject line, start a new thread with a fresh subject line which more accurately reflects the email’s actual contents. It’s annoying to open an email thinking that it’s about “Re: Deadline reminder” when it’s actually really about “By the way, how do I compile this file?”

Don’t ever send an email with an empty subject line.

Tip 2: Use an appropriate greeting

The first line of your email should be a greeting, followed by an empty line and then your message body. If it is your first time emailing somebody, “Hi ____,” or simply “____,” are greetings that I prefer. I think that “Dear ____:” is too stuffy and awkward. What should you put in the blank? Always strive to be as formal as possible, especially for first impressions. Use the most distinguished title for the recipient. For example, for a professor named John Smith, use “Prof. Smith” instead of “Dr. Smith”. For someone with a medical or doctorate degree, use “Dr. Smith”. Otherwise, use “Mr.”, “Mrs.”, or whatever else is appropriate.Beware of using first names unless you are already on a first-name basis with the recipient. If he/she replies to your initial message, chances are, he/she will sign the reply with his/her first name, like “Regards, John”. Do not take this to mean that you now have permission to call him “John” in your next email. Still use “Prof. Smith” unless he explicitly says, “you can call me John.” It never hurts to be a bit too formal at first.

Tip 3: Introduce yourself in one sentence (if necessary)

If this person doesn’t know who you are, introduce yourself briefly using only one (not overly-long) sentence right after your greeting. Write only what is relevant to let this person know what he/she needs to know about you in order for your email to make sense. For example, maybe mention that you are on summer break and in town if you want to schedule an in-person meeting, but don’t just say “My summer is awesome so far, I’m chillin’ at home” if that’s not relevant to your email’s intentions. If you have interacted with this person before, remind him/her in this first sentence so that he/she can quickly retrieve a mental image of you (e.g., “I’m Joe, the student who talked to you about my 3-D game project at the career fair last week.”). Stop the introduction after the first sentence because by then your recipient should already know who you are.

Tip 4: The first (non-intro.) sentence is the most important – Give it all you’ve got

After you have introduced yourself if necessary (see Tip 3), the next sentence is the most important one in the entire email. This is like your thesis sentence — say what you want to say right now! Pretend that nobody will read past this sentence; can you still pretty much make your point clear? Don’t be suspenseful and build up to a big climax at the end of your email. Busy people don’t want to read several paragraphs without knowing what you want from them.

Tip 5: Put all important details at the top of the email body (or even better, in the Subject line)

Don’t bury a key piece of information inside of a large paragraph and expect a busy person to quickly be able to extract it upon first reading. The larger the paragraph (and the more paragraphs there are), the more likely that the reader will miss a particular point you are trying to make while he/she is skimming your email. For example, I once received a really long email telling me about administrative move-in procedures for on-campus graduate housing. My assigned apartment number was hidden deep inside the fourth paragraph. I had to read that email several times before I even realized that number was contained in it, and it was the most important piece of information in the entire message (the rest simply described procedures). I was actually waiting for an email to tell me that number, but the subject line didn’t indicate that this particular email would have the information I wanted. It would’ve been much more clear if my assigned apartment number were written separately at the top of the email body or even in the subject line.

Tip 6: Keep the rest of the email short (8 sentences max.)

After you’ve made your main point, the rest of the sentences in your email should provide additional supporting information. Unless there is an obvious need to write a long email (such as when a friend asks you for detailed advice … but this article is not about personal emails), keep the email as short as possible. I think 8 sentences should be more than enough for a general-purpose email. Don’t overwhelm your reader with details unless he/she explicitly asked for them. Separate paragraphs with a blank line to improve readability; it’s okay to have 1- or 2-sentence paragraphs when your entire email is around 8 sentences. Busy people are not likely to read long emails in detail; they will most likely skim it or just keep it in their Inbox and read it at a later time. Your goal is to have the person read your email and hopefully respond to it within a short time period, so keep your email as short as possible to make it easier for your reader to comprehend.

Tip 7: The final sentence – Either provide something concrete to reply to or make it clear that a reply is not necessary

Is the purpose of your email to elicit a reply? If so, make sure that your purpose is clear in the final sentence. You need to provide something concrete and unambiguous for the recipient to reply to. Throw the ball back into his/her court with something like “Please let me know what appointment times work best for you.” or “I am free Tuesday 11-2 or Thursday 1-5; let me know which is best for you.”If you do not expect a reply and merely want to provide information, simply summarize the information in the final sentence (e.g., “I look forward to seeing you tomorrow at 1pm in my office.”).

Tip 8: Make your concluding phrase and signature context-appropriate

If I am expecting a reply, I usually write a simple “Thanks.” after the final sentence. If the person is doing me a favor, I write something stronger, like “Thanks a lot.” or “Thanks in advance.” If I am not expecting a reply, I might end with “Take care.” or “Best wishes.” I usually sign with only my first name, “Philip”, but in a more formal occasion, I will use my first and last names, “Philip Guo”. You can include other contact information such as cell phone number if it is relevant, but if not, I would leave it out in order to prevent verbosity.

Tip 9: When replying, mix your replies with blocks of quoted text from the original message

When replying to someone’s message, you should strive to address every point he/she raised, and the best way to do so is to start with a ‘quoted’ copy of the original message, work your way down, and then insert blank lines and your reply text underneath the appropriate blocks of the original text. Many email programs can do this for you automatically. To save space, finish by excising all original text that isn’t relevant for your reply (e.g., “Hi, this is Bill. I’m currently on vacation, but I have some questions:”).I usually like to write my own greeting and a quick “See below for my responses …” line above all of the original quoted message. Don’t forget to conclude and sign (see Tip 8) in order to indicate whether you want a reply or not (e.g., “Let me know if you have any more questions.”).

Tip 10: When writing to more than one person, use the “To:” and “Cc:” fields appropriately and make it clear who (if anyone) you expect to reply to your email

Usually it is implied that if you have included someone in the “To:” field, then he/she is an intended recipient and should reply if possible. If someone is in the “Cc:” field, then the email is merely an FYI (‘for your information’) for him/her, and he/she is not expected to reply. If you are sending a mass informational email, then you don’t really expect anyone to respond so you don’t need to elicit a reply with your final sentence (see Tip 7). If you want a particular person to reply to a specific part of your email, make that clear (e.g., “Sarah, could you forward me last week’s budget?”), or if you want everyone to reply, you can say something like “I would appreciate everyone’s feedback about my ideas.”When an email has more than one recipient, there is the danger of nobody replying because everyone thinks that someone else has already replied. That is why “Reply to All” might be a good idea to show that you have already replied so that somebody else does not later duplicate the information you have just provided.

Tip 11: If possible, do not attach large files (> 1MB)

The bane of many people’s mailboxes are large email attachments, because they take up so much more space than plaintext email messages. Large attachments slow people down and might cause their email storage space to exceed the provided quota, which might lead to delayed or lost emails. Over the course of your work, you will probably find yourself attaching word processor documents, spreadsheets, or slideshow presentations (if possible, strive for a platform-independent format for all of these, such as Adobe PDF). Presentations in particular can take up lots of space, on the order of several megabytes, because they often contain lots of images. If possible, try to upload your presentation somewhere on the web and provide a link to it in your email. If you are at a university, you should have some amount of webspace, and if you are in a company, you should have space on some internal file server.