The Personality Development Workbook

Email is the preferred medium of communication in today's age. We shoot off mails to colleagues, friends and family.

Sending a mail with proper etiquette will immediately cause you to go up in the viewer's opinion. A poorly written mail shows ignorance and disrespect to the reader. It can even make or break a job quest.

Having a proper email etiquette is essential to projecting a great personality. Since first impressions are often made through email these days, it is all the more important to focus on developing our communication effectiveness in this medium. In our quest for personality development, email etiquette also plays an important role.

So how do we write an email that is just right? Here are a few tips to always bear in mind.

Readability

One key factor which makes a quality email is readability. Use proper grammar, punctuation and spelling. Divide the text to paragraphs as applicable. Do not use chatspeak or sticky caps or all caps in an email. Use proper salutation (when in doubt, stay formal) and signature. For professional emails especially, leave a footer with all relevant information about you, and a disclaimer when applicable.

Content

Make sure you send emails that contain correct and relevant information. Time is of utmost importance in today's world, and nobody wants to scroll through a lot of gibberish or unimportant information. Get to the point. It is important that all content should be worded very politely, since it is easy to mistake the tone of an email. Do not include unnecessary and bulky attachments. Always give a meaningful subject line, not just "hi". Do not send or forward confidential information. When you answer a mail with a lot of questions, you should quote the questions before you answer, and not just type yes/no. Always proof read your email.

Recipients

Do not forward chain mail. When you forward a mail, always, always remove the sender's information from the body of the mail. Include all recipient addresses in the BCC field when sending fun forwards. Do not overuse the "reply to all" feature. Do not CC people who really don't need to know. Try to reply within 48 hours to every mail. Do not reply to spam mails.

General

Do not overuse the "high priority" tag or mark your messages as "urgent" or "important" unnecessarily. Do not request read and delivery receipts except where it is absolutely important. Do not send offensive, derogatory, racist, sexist etc remarks via email. Do not send out emails which promise luck for forwarding and bad luck for deleting. Before you send a mail, make sure the information is authentic - else add a disclaimer. Do not overuse emoticons. HTML email is not everybody's friend.

Hope these tips help to make your emails look and sound much more professional!

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