Business English – Email

by Sivadurga Adduri, TYV Ambassador, Leaders Private School, Sharjah

Do you know how to write a business email? If it’s a no, then don’t worry! Here, I have listed a few tips and tricks to conquer the art of email writing.

Business emails are a pillar of modern communication. Hence, making our etiquette, style and format genuine is essential in making our email stand out.

Make you subject lines clear and efficient to understand

To understand this, let us take the example of a newspaper headline. It has to grab people’s attention and summarise the whole article as well. Similarly, the subject line of our mail should do the same thing.

Bad Example	Good Example
Subject: Meeting	Subject: Student Meeting – 9 am March 5, 2017

In case you have a short message to share, you can summarise the whole thing in the subject line, and ensure that you end it with “EOM”, which stands for End of Message.

Example

Subject: Could you please pass the annual sales report? Thank you!! EOM

Use phrases that spice up your message

To communicate your point properly, always look to using phrases that give a beautiful look to your mail.

“The deadline for this is tomorrow, around _:_,” is less appreciated than, “It’d be preferable if you can get this done today so that we can discuss changes.”
“Sorry for the delay,” sounds more old-fashioned than, “Thank you for your patience,” in the same scenario.
Instead of, “No problem!” or “No worries!” which doesn’t sound sincere anymore, you could use, “Always happy to help.”
Upon making an error, instead of, “Ahh sorry! My bad. Totally missed that,” we could say,

“Nice catch! Updated file attached. Thanks for letting me know!”

Keep your professionalism alive

Ensure that the messages you send are polite, as this is the basic reflection of who you are in the business sphere. Close your emails with, “Regards,” “Yours Sincerely,” “Thank You,” or, “All the best.”

Email robs us from understanding the feelings of the person reading it. Keeping this in mind, we must choose our words wisely and always check our tone.

Bad Example

Good Example

ABC,

We need your report by 2pm, or else we will miss the deadline.

XYZ.

Hi ABC,

We would love to have your contribution to the project by 2pm. Thank you for all your effort. Let’s do our best to not miss the deadline.

Thanks a lot!

XYZ.

Proofreading

Make sure you take a minute to review your mail. Pay careful attention to the length of your mail. People are more likely to read short and to the point emails, rather than long ones.