What Makes a Bad E-mail

Are you bad at writing e-mails?

Don’t worry, you’re not alone. In contrast to my other blog post, “How to Create a Good E-mail”, I will be highlighting what you’re doing wrong in your e-mails.

1.       You never have a CC or a subject line. This makes it difficult for the recipient to filter out bad spam or e-mails without significance. With all the e-mails that employers and employees receive, they probably won’t even open your e-mail if it doesn’t seem relevant to their day-to-day tasks.

2.       Your e-mail is difficult to understand. When the recipient doesn’t understand what your message is or why your e-mail was even sent to them, then you have a problem. People don’t want to read a novel when they open an e-mail but they also don’t want to only read one sentence. There is a healthy medium that should give them enough information without hurting their brain. A quick e-mail between 50-150 words should be enough to get your message across.

3.       You use slang or informal language. Not everyone knows how to use slang or how to speak appropriately use informal language in the workplace and some people might even take offense to it. When writing an e-mail, it is expected for employees to communicate the same way that they would in the workplace. Formal language is an appropriate way of speaking in an e-mail, especially to a superior, in order not to offend anyone. Most of the time, formal language makes it easier to get your message across as well since everyone in the workplace understands it (Lombardo, 2009).

References

Baer, J. (2015). 15 E-mail Statistics That are Shaping the Future. Retrieved from Convince and Convert: http://www.convinceandconvert.com/convince-convert/15-email-statistics-that-are-shaping-the-future/

Lombardo, J. (2009). Writing Effective Emails in the Workplace: Formality, Content, Language, and Format. Retrieved from Study.com: http://study.com/academy/lesson/writing-effective-emails-in-the-workplace-formality-content-language-and-format.html