Day 253: Guidelines for e-mail etiquette, part 1

Greeting lines:
Personal e-mails: Use the recipient’s first name followed by comma. Just using the name is sufficient. I don’t recommend using “Dear.” Because of the informal nature, you may wish, instead, to start with some other greeting, such as “Good morning” or “Hi.”

Formal, business e-mails: Use the recipient’s first name followed by a colon, just like in a business letter. Use the same greeting line information that you would use in a formal business letter. Here, you may wish to use “Dear” followed by the name. Interestingly, “Dear” gives the e-mail a formal touch.

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Closing lines:
Personal e-mails: You can generally omit closing lines. Finish the content of the message and follow it with your signature information.

Formal, business e-mails: Follow the content of the body with some form of tag line, such as “I look forward to hearing from you” or “Please let me know if you have any questions.” You can leave out letter closings, such as “Sincerely,” or you can include them. Either way is acceptable.

Day 254: Guidelines for e-mail etiquette, part 2

Paragraphing:
Use short paragraphs to make on-screen reading easier. Readers may have difficulty following the content if you have more than 4 or 5 lines of text. Put a blank line between paragraphs. Don’t indent the first line—you don’t need to because you’re adding the blank lines.

Mechanics:
Mechanics are important. The recipient of a personal e-mail may forgive you for errors; the recipient of a business e-mail will not and should not. Mechanics are as important in your e-mail as in a business letter. They may affect meaning, which is critical for communicating accurately.

Signature:
At a minimum, include your name. For business e-mails, also include your e-mail address (even though it is already included in the e-mail routing information) and phone number. Also include the URL for your main business website.

General format:
For personal e-mails, pretty much anything goes. For business emails, you need a formal appearance. This means no artistic fonts (which may be hard to read and may not be present on the recipient’s computer), no background images (which may make the text difficult to read), and no brightly colored text (for the same reason). The point is that business e-mails are formal.

If the content is very long, longer than one screen, for example, consider writing a synopsis in the e-mail body and attaching a formal business letter with detailed content. Use a PDF if possible.