14.2 Electronic Written Communication

While working in Operations Management, you will be required to use electronic channels of communication. E-mail deserves a close look because it is the most widespread and established of the electronic forms. Since so much of our lives are wrapped up in electronic interaction, reviewing the netiquette principles established at the outset of the electronic communications revolution can actually help us move forward as we look at the newest and fastest communication channels, texting and instant messaging.

By volume, e-mails are the most popular written communication channel in the history of human civilization. With e-mails being so cheap and easy to send on desktop and laptop computers, as well as on mobile phones and tablets, a staggering 280 billion e-mails are sent globally per day.^[1] —that’s over a hundred trillion per year. Most are for business purposes because e-mail is such a flexible channel ideal for anything from short, routine information shares, requests, and responses, to important formal messages delivering the content that letters and memos used to handle. Its ability to send a message to one person or as many people as you have addresses for, integrate with calendars for scheduling meetings and events, send document attachments, and send automatic replies makes it the most versatile communication channel in the workplace.

The Writing Process

When creating an e-mail, it is important to consider your audience, the intended message and the desired outcome. Let’s begin with the audience. Is your e-mail intended for one person, a department or an entire organization? Next, consider the purpose of your e-mail. Perhaps you are providing information to others, such as the results of a recent survey. Finally, consider whether you are going to provide the reader with an action item, such as providing you with their feedback within 2 days.

It is best to create a draft of your e-mail and review it for accuracy. For extremely important e-mails, it may be helpful to draft the e-mail one day early and return to it the following day for a final proofread before hitting “send”. Should you write an e-mail while upset, it is best to create a draft of your proposed e-mail and then revisit the e-mail the following day before sending it to the intended audience. Once 24 hours have passed, you will often read your draft e-mail and decide not to send it as time has passed and you can see the situation more clearly.

Although e-mail is certainly a convenient method of communication, it isn’t always the right method of communication. Stop and ask yourself why you aren’t calling to speak to the other party, or better yet, speaking to them face-to-face if that option is available to you. Speaking to a person by phone or in person typically alleviates the need for back-and-forth e-mails and reduces the likelihood of misunderstandings as individuals may misread the tone or the intent of your e-mail.

Structure and Content

Before delving into the details of how to construct e-mails, let’s review the advantages, disadvantages, and occasions for their use.

E-mail Address

The first thing you see when an e-mail arrives in your inbox is who it’s from. The address determines immediately how you feel about that e-mail—whether excited, uninterested, curious, angry, hopeful, scared or just obliged to read it. Your e-mail address will create similar impressions on those you e-mail, depending on your relationship with them. It’s therefore important that you send from the right e-mail address. While at work, you must use your company e-mail address for company business.

Timestamp & Punctuality

The timestamp that comes with each e-mail means that punctuality matters and raises the question of what the expectations are for the acceptable lag time between receiving an e-mail and returning an expected response. Of course, you can reply as soon as possible as you would when texting and have a back-and-forth recorded in a thread. What if you need more time, however?

Though common wisdom used to be that the business standard is to reply within 24 hours, the availability of e-mail on the smartphones that almost everyone carries in their pockets has reduced that expectation to a few hours. Recent research shows that half of e-mail responses in business environments comes within two hours.^[2] Some businesses have internal policies that demand even quicker responses because business moves fast. If you can get someone’s business sooner than the competition because you reply sooner, then of course you’re going to make every effort to reply right away. Of course, the actual work you do can get in the way of e-mail, but you must prioritize incoming work in order to stay in business.

What if you can’t reply within the expected number of hours? The courteous course of action is to reply as soon as possible with a brief message saying that you’ll be turning your attention to this matter as soon as you can. You don’t have to go into detail about what’s delaying you unless it’s relevant to the topic, but courtesy requires that you at least give a timeline for a fuller response and stick to it.

Subject Line

The next most important piece of information you see when scanning your inbox is the subject line of the e-mail. The busy professional who receives dozens of e-mails each day prioritizes their workload and response efforts based largely on the content of the subject lines appearing in their inbox. Because the subject line acts as a title for the e-mail, the subject line should accurately summarize its topic in 3-7 words.

The word count range here is important because your subject line shouldn’t be so vague that its one or two words will be misleading, nor so long and detailed that your inbox layout will cut off its eight-plus words. Though it must be specific to the e-mail topic, details about specific times and places, for instance, should really be in the message itself rather than in the subject line (see Table 8.2 below). Also, avoid using words in your subject line that might make your e-mail look like spam. A subject line such as Hello or That thing we talked about might appear to be a hook to get you to open an e-mail that contains a malware virus. This may prompt the recipient to delete it to be on the safe side, or their e-mail provider may automatically send it to the junk mailbox, which people rarely check. It will be as good as gone, in any case.

Stylistically, notice that appropriately sized subject lines typically abbreviate where they can and avoid articles (the, a, an), capitalization beyond the first word (except for proper nouns), and excessive adjectives.

Whatever you do, don’t leave your subject line blank. Even if you’re just firing off a quick e-mail to send an attachment to yourself, the subject line text will be essential to your ability to retrieve that file later.

Opening Salutation & Recipient Selection

When a reader opens your e-mail, its opening salutation indicates not only who the message is for but also its level of formality. As you can see in Table 8.3 below, opening with Dear [Full Name] or Greetings, [Full Name]: strikes an appropriately respectful tone when writing to someone for the first time in a professional context. When greeting someone you’ve e-mailed before, Hello, [First name]: maintains a semi-formal tone. When you’re more casually addressing a familiar colleague, a simple Hi [First name], is just fine.

Notice that the punctuation includes a comma after the greeting word and a colon after their name for formal and semi-formal occasions. Informal greetings, however, relax these rules by omitting the comma after the greeting word and replacing the colon with a comma.

Depending on the nature of the message, you can use alternative greeting possibilities. If you’re thanking someone for information they’ve sent you, you can do so right away in the greeting; e.g., Many thanks for the contact list, Maggie. When your e-mail exchange turns into a back-and-forth thread involving several e-mails, it’s customary to drop the salutation altogether and treat each message as if it were a text message even in formal situations.

Formality also dictates whether you use the recipient’s first name or full name in your salutation. If you’re writing to someone you know well or responding to an e-mail where the sender signed off at the bottom using their first name, they’ve given you the green light to address them by their first name in your response. If you’re addressing someone formally for the first time, however, strike an appropriately respectful tone by using their full name. If you’re addressing a group, a simple Hello, all: or Hello, team: will do.

Be careful when selecting recipients. First, spell their name correctly because e-mail addresses often have non-standard combinations of name fragments and numbers; any typos will result in the server bouncing your e-mail back to you as being unsent. Wait before entering their name in the recipient or “To” field in case you accidentally hit the Send button before you’re finished drafting your e-mail. If you prematurely send an e-mail, immediately send a quick follow-up apologizing for the confusion and the completed message. Another preventative measure is to compose a message offline, such as in an MS Word or simple Notepad document devoid of formatting, then copy and paste it into the e-mail field when you’re ready to send.

Never “reply all” so that everyone included in the “To” line and CC’d sees your reply unless your response includes information that everyone absolutely must see. Bear in mind that, concerning e-mail security, no matter who you select as the primary or secondary (CC’d) recipients of your e-mail, always assume that it may be forwarded on to other people, including those you might not want to see it. E-mails are not private. You have no control over whether the recipients will forward an e-mail on to others, and if your e-mail contains any legally sensitive content, it can even be retrieved from the server storing it with a warrant from law enforcement. A good rule of thumb is to never send an e-mail that you would be embarrassed by if it were read by your boss, your family, or a jury. No technical barriers prevent it from falling into their hands.

Message Opening

Most e-mails will be direct-approach messages where you get right to the point in the opening sentence immediately below the opening salutation. The direct-approach pattern does the reader a favour by not burying the main point under a pile of contextual background. If you send a busy professional on a treasure hunt for your main point, a request for information for example, don’t blame them if they don’t find it and don’t provide the information you asked for. They might have given up before they got there or missed it when skimming, as busy people tend to do. By stating in the opening exactly what you want the recipient to do, however, you increase your chances of achieving that goal.

Indirect-approach e-mails should be rare and only sent in extenuating circumstances. Using e-mail to deliver bad news or address a sensitive topic can be seen as a cowardly way of avoiding difficult situations that should be dealt with in person or, if the people involved are too far distant, at least by phone. Other circumstances that might force you to use the indirect approach for e-mails include the following:

• Needing to use persuasive techniques
• Having no other means of contacting the recipient
• Needing to get the e-mail exchange in writing in case the situation escalates and must be handled as evidence by higher authorities
• Needing to deliver a large number of bad-news messages without having the time or resources to individually customize each, such as when you are sending rejection notices to job applicants (see the sample indirect opening in Table 8.4 above); out of expedience, it’s understandable if these are boiler-plate responses

In such cases, the indirect approach means that the opening should use buffer strategies to ease the recipient into the bad news or set the proper context for discussing the sensitive topic.

Otherwise, your e-mail must pass the first-screen test, which is that everything the recipient needs to see is visible in the opening without forcing them to scroll further down for it. Before pressing the Send button, put yourself in your reader’s shoes and consider whether your message passes the first-screen test. If not, and if you have no good reason to take the indirect approach, then re-organize your e-mail message by moving (copying, cutting, and pasting, or ctrl. + C, ctrl. + X, ctrl. + v) its main point up to make it the opening of your message.

Message Body

E-mails long enough to divide into paragraphs follow the three-part message organization where the message body supports the opening main point with explanatory details such as background information justifying an information request. With brevity being so important in e-mails, keeping the message body concise, with no more information than the recipient needs to do their job, is extremely important to the message’s success. The message body, therefore, doesn’t need proper three-part paragraphs. In fact, one-sentence paragraphs (single spaced with a line of space between each) and bullet-point lists are fine. If your message grows in length beyond the first screen, document design features such as bold headings help direct readers to the information they need. If your message gets any larger, moving it into an attached document is better than writing several screens of large paragraphs. Keep e-mail messages brief by sticking to one topic per e-mail.

Message Closing

An e-mail closing usually includes action information such as direction on what to do with the information in the message above and deadlines for action and response. If the message doesn’t call for action details, some closing thought (e.g., I’m happy to help. Please drop me a line if you have any questions) ends it without giving the impression of being rudely abrupt. Goodwill statements, such as Thanks again for your feedback on our customer service, are necessary especially in e-mails involving gratitude.

Closing Salutation

A courteous closing to an e-mail involves a combination of a pleasant sign-off word or phrase and your first name. As with the opening salutation, closing salutation possibilities depend on the nature of the message and where you want to position it on the formality spectrum, as shown in Table 8.5 below.

Your first e-mail to someone in a professional context should end with a more formal closing salutation. Later e-mails to the same person can use the appropriate semi-formal closing salutation for the occasion. If you’re on friendly, familiar terms with the person but still want to include e-mail formalities, an informal closing salutation can bring a smile to their face. Notice in Table 17.5 that you capitalize only the first word in the closing salutation and add a comma at the end.

Including your first name after the closing salutation ends in a friendly way as if to say, “Let’s be on a first-name basis” if you weren’t already, greenlighting your recipient to address you by your first name in their reply. In your physical absence, your name at the end is also a way of saying, like politicians chiming in at the end of campaign ads, “I’m [name] and I approve this message.” It’s a stamp of authorship. Omitting it gives the impression of being abrupt and too busy or important to stop for even a second of formal niceties.

E-signature

Not to be confused with an electronic version of your handwritten signature, the e-signature that automatically appears at the very bottom of your e-mail is like the business card you would hand to someone when networking. Every professional should have one. Like a business card, the e-signature includes all relevant contact information. At the very least, the e-signature should include the details given in Table 8.6 below.

Attachments

E-mail’s ability to help you send and receive documents makes it an indispensable tool for any business. Bear in mind a few best practices when attaching documents:

• Always announce an attachment in an e-mail message with a very brief description of its contents. For instance, Please find attached the minutes from today’s departmental meeting might be all you write between the opening and closing salutations.
• Never leave a message blank when attaching a document in an e-mail to someone else. Your message should at least be like the one given above. Of course, including a message is up to you if you’re sending yourself an attachment as an alternative to using a dedicated cloud storage service like Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive. Even if it’s just for yourself, however, at least including a subject line identifying the nature of the attachment will make locating the file easier months or even years later.
• Ensure that your attachment size, if it’s many megabytes (MB), is still less than your e-mail provider’s maximum allowable for sending and receiving. Gmail and Yahoo, for instance, allow attachments up to 25 MB, whereas Outlook/Hotmail allow only 10 MB attachments.
• Always check to ensure that you’ve attached a document as part of your editing process. It shows that you lack attention to detail if your recipient responds to remind you to attach the document.

Before Sending Your E-mail

Before hitting the send button, follow through on the entire writing process, especially the editing stage with its evaluation, revision, and proofreading sub-stages. Put yourself in your reader’s position and assess whether you’ve achieved the purpose you set out to achieve in the first place.

After revising generally, always proofread an e-mail. In any professional situation, but especially in important ones related to gaining and keeping employment, any typo or error related to spelling, grammar, or punctuation can cost you dearly.

Analysis: The poorly written draft has the look of a hastily and angrily written text to a “frenemy.” An e-mail to a superior, however, calls for a much more formal, tactful, courteous, and apologetic approach. The undifferentiated wall of text that omits or botches standard e-mail parts such as opening and closing salutations is the first sign of trouble. The lack of capitalization, poor spelling (e.g., councilor instead of counsellor), run-on sentences and lack of other punctuation such as apostrophes for contractions, as well as the inappropriate personal detail all suggest that the writer doesn’t take their studies seriously enough to deserve any favours. Besides tacking on a question at the end, one that could be easily answered by reading the syllabus, the writer is ultimately unclear about what they want; if it’s an explanation for why they failed, then they must be upfront about that. The rudeness of the closing is more likely to enrage the recipient than get them to deliver the requested information.

Analysis: The improved version stands a much better chance of a sympathetic response. It corrects the problems of the first draft starting with properly framing the message with expected formal e-mail parts. It benefits from a more courteous tone in a message that frontloads a clear and polite request for information in the opening. The supporting detail in the message body and apologetic closing suggests that the student, despite their faults, is well aware of how to communicate like a professional to achieve a particular goal.

After running such a quality-assurance check on your e-mail, your final step before sending it should involve protecting yourself against losing it to a technical glitch. Get in the habit of copying your e-mail message text (ctrl. + A, ctrl. + C) just before hitting the Send button, then checking your Sent folder immediately to confirm that the e-mail sent properly. If your message vanished due to some random malfunction, as can happen occasionally, immediately open a blank MS Word or Notepad document and paste the text there (ctrl. + V) to save it. That way, you don’t have to waste five minutes rewriting the entire message after you solve the connectivity issues or whatever else caused the glitch.

“Chapter 6: Electronic Written Communication”  and “Unit 18: Emailing” from Communication @ Work Seneca Edition by Jordan Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

“6.1: Emailing” from Professional Communications by Jordan Smith; Melissa Ashman; eCampusOntario; Brian Dunphy; and Andrew Stracuzzi is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.