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