The plague of bad emailing & even worse messaging

And how to cure it

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An introduction you may want to skip

You probably do not need Statista to tell you that email and social media is a prevalent form of written communication today. An average office worker sends and receives more than 100 emails per day (Email Usage Statistics 2019). Add to these the hundreds of texts you read in social media, either directed to you or not, and you get the idea.

So why do most people pay so little attention to it? Why do they rarely read the emails addressed to them carefully and respond with questions already answered in the email just received?

You go through your inbox and it looks like people have sacrificed good communication for the sake of a misunderstood “fast pace” and “efficiency”. Zoom, Teams, Slack or even Instagram or TikTok will not end the need for solid written communication. The least we can do is start paying attention and do it better. Both in our professional and in our personal life.

Rules of Engagement

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I work in international development, so written correspondence and emails were always one of the most important tools in my professional life. Working with people from countries across the world, English may be a language we all understand, however, not all of us at the same level.

So, you need to be clear, brief and straightforward. Here are some basic rules.

1. Embrace the task. You are going to spend considerable time of your day responding to emails. It’s not a drudge, it is an important part of your job. Whether it is a short 3 line message or a long email, whether it is to acknowledge something significant, to thank, to express sympathy or to draw attention to a matter, take it seriously, or do not do it at all.
2. Choose wisely. Pick the important emails that require attention or response. Archive, delete or disregard the rest. The fact that you get hundreds of emails a day is not an excuse for responding late.
3. Is there a task in there? Understand the subject, the purpose of the communication, what you want to achieve. Does the email require any action from you? Add it to your task list or your calendar. Do you expect something from your recipients? Point it out.
4. Keep people informed. If you realise that you cannot give an appropriate response to an email, at least offer an update. “Thanks for the email. I need to look up a few things before I respond. I’ll get back to you tomorrow/by the end of the week”. Don’t overpromise.
5. Be patient. Many people put words in writing as if they are talking to their buddy. Emails often look aggressive when in fact they are just badly written. Moreover, people whose English is not good enough make mistakes that alter both the tone and the meaning of their message. Your first impulse would probably be to respond with “Are you an idiot?”. Do not. Relax. Ask them what they mean. If possible talk chat with them.
6. Be careful. NEVER, EVER, write or respond to an important email if you are upset or tired. I guarantee you will do something you will later regret: pick a wrong fight, send an email to the wrong person, forget someone in CC when you should have erased them. It has happened to all of us.

The art of writing an email

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You will find plenty of articles on the internet on marketing emails, etiquette, effective communication and so on. Just google it. Most of them are applicable in every type of communication. However, I would like to focus to the modest professional email. To your colleagues, your boss, your partners, your team.

Here is some tested advise:

1. Pick your subject wisely. Establish a practice where the subject will give some useful information. e.g. the project title, the client, some unique code or whatever makes sense for you but also for your correspondent.
2. Structure. Use headings, bullets and numbering to make your message clear. Every email has a purpose. Is this purpose clear? What is it that you want to say? What do you expect from your recipients? When?
3. Write for the occasion. You are not writing a novel. Be formal when necessary, business casual by default.
4. Make your text smart. Use hyperlinks in your text instead of just pasting a huge URL. Use the cloud to send big attachments through email. Highlight an important sentence. Use one or two emojis ⁉️ to point out.
5. Break the endless threads. Threads are useful but they often become unmanageable. And carrying 15 old emails with bulky signatures in every response does not make sense. You can keep that latest 3–4 emails and create a new thread, more specific and more current.
6. Consider the recipients. Do you really need to add all these 14 names to the CC field?
7. TO and CC field are not the same. You end up with the same result but the intention is different. You address the email to the person or persons that need to take action. CC field is for those that you want to keep in the loop. You can make sure this is clear by addressing the persons explicitly in the email. “Dear John, Tim and James,” rather than “Dear all,”.
8. Keep it short. Finished? Read your text again and see if you can make it simpler and shorter.

Looking for more?

If the above advise was not enough for you, I have some links to suggest:

• A good primer for communication in the workplace by Entrepreneur
• How to write a professional email by Indeed. With nice examples.
• Set your language strait. By English Live.
• A piece for Email Etiquette by Purdue University.

These rules may sound trivial (and they are) but I feel like we should start from these trivial things. And if you want to take something with you from this rather mundane list of advise, it should be this:

Pay attention to your writings. They matter.