Office Tips

By Stephanie Black

Office Tips for Effective E-mail Messages

Most often e-mail users neglect to check how their communication will come across to their readers.  To make sure your e-mail doesn’t short circuit a business relationship, consider these common sense guidelines:

• Think about who may read your message.
• Try to picture how your message’s receiver will react when reading your message.
• Avoid starting a message by saying something such as:  “Why didn’t you answer me sooner?”
• Use the “grandma test,” if your grandmother would not find the remark in good taste or appropriate, scrap it.
• Make sure your message is clear and concise and everything is all the reader needs to know.
• Check your message for grammar.
• Reread messages before you send them.
• Limit your messages with unnecessary wording.
• Use bullets, numbers, underlining, boldface, etc., to highlight key points.
• Don’t let e-mail be a substitute for a personal phone call.

E-mail has become so prevalent that most of us spend considerable time reading and responding to email everyday.  So you should do everything you can to compose messages that will help your readers save time!