Better E-Mails in^ 5 Minutes
and, few E-Mail Annoyances and Avoiding them
Presented by Anurag Shrivastava
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• Sending very large attachments. Especially just after the recipient has gone on a long vacation.
Use services like yousendit.com
• Using SMS language in a business e-mail
• Mindless use of colors and fonts in the mail. Cut and paste job
• Responding to or initiating an e-mail by using some unrelated old mail.
• Not understanding the difference between bcc and cc. Inadvertently exposing your contacts. Reply all to such mails
• Being too lazy or too busy to write the subject of an e-mail
• Sending any e-mail thoughtlessly with Importance:high
• Being too lazy or too busy to scroll down and understand the mail context
• Ask for e-mail receipts as a habit
• Not using spell check before sending the mail
• Writing incomplete sentences with outrageous grammatical mistakes, misplaced comma and periods.
• Not closing a mail with a greeting
• Writing part of mail in all CAPS. This amounts to shouting.
• Writing e-mail in using business letter formatting
• Using old fashioned indentation
• Sending unsolicited e-mails. Popularly known as spam
Survival Tips
• Respond to e-mails quickly (24 hrs to 48 hrs)• Use a proper footer in your new emails
• Avoid full footer while posting to public discussion groups.
Survival Tips
• Addressing:– To: I need to take some action on the mail.– CC: I need to know this.
• Use CC thoughtfully• Be conservative with abbreviations and chat
language– LOL, TGIF, EOD, FYI
Survival Tips
• Starting a new thread based upon a running thread
Survival Tips
• Subject Line:– Make a sensible subject line– No full stop is need in the subject line– Subject Line <eom> convention
Survival Tips
Message to be delivered
Size of Audience
Kind of Audience
Message Tone
Survival Tips• Start your mail– Dear Abhishek, Dear Mr. van Vliet, Dear Ms. Kleine-Boog,– Hi Maarten, Hi Mr. van Vliet, Hello Abhishek,– Vikas,– Hi, Start body directly
• End your mail– Best regards, Regards,– Cheers, (less common in Europe)– Just your name– Avoid full stop after your name
Survival Tips
• No space before punctuation mark.• Exactly one space after punctuation mark.• Use short sentences.• Use paragraphs.• Use simple English.– Avoid official expressions– Superlatives and poetic styles
Survival Tips
• List Numbering– 1., 2., 3. or use bullets or use *– Avoid 1) and roman numbers XVII
• Fonts– Arial, Calibri, Tahoma, Verdana– Most technical people use clients that can display
the mails only in plain text– Use dark font colors
Thank you