It might go without saying for many people that when creating business emails they should be professional. However, too many times I have witnessed the opposite. Emails with poor grammar and misspellings are the worst culprits. Sending these types of emails internally can cause lack of confidence and even lack of respect by the recipients of the sender; and when sent externally can cause lack of confidence in not just the sender, but in the company as well.
With more and more communications being created on mobile devices, it means everyone is typing and sending on the run. But, professionalism should not suffer. Here are a few basic tips to help keep your emails sounding and looking like they were written by a professional and not a grade school “texter” on the go.
- Proofread. This is an easy task to perform before you click that Send button. Reread your email and look for spelling and grammar mistakes along with context. If you do this just once, you are sure to catch errors or even reword sentences correctly. If you are simply not a good speller or have trouble with grammar, then #2 might help you.
- Use spelling and grammar check. This can be accomplished with a setting in almost all popular email clients. Having it perform a spelling and grammar check before sending the email can save you from very simple mistakes. If your email client does not have this feature, although most do, you might be able to see misspellings as you type – words underlined with dotted or squiggly lines. This is to alert you of a misspelling or even grammatical.
- Use a professional email signature. Even if your company or correspondence is more casual, having an email signature that includes at least your first and last name, title, company, phone, and email is always best. Your recipient should always see your contact information. This can be set up on almost any popular email client, including those on mobile devices, to be automatically added to the end of your emails. You can normally set different signatures for composing original emails or replies.
In these times of writing on the go, it is important to still keep professionalism in your emails. And remember, you never know who your email might be sent to or forwarded to after you click Send. Keeping your professional voice and reputation is difficult to do when your correspondences come across as unprofessional.
Originally published on Experts Pages on 6/21/13
