10 Tips for Writing Effective E-Mail

“Does anyone have a blog topic to suggest?” I asked one of my classes last week, after a student mentioned the AuthorAID blog.

“Write about doing e-mail,” a student quickly answered.

What a good idea! Much of the writing that researchers do is e-mail. And preparing e-mail skillfully can save time, avoid confusion and conflict, and promote success.

So here are 10 tips on preparing e-mail:

1. Use an informative subject line. For example, rather than saying “A Request”, say “Request to Review Draft”.
2. State important points early in the message, to help make sure that they are read.
3. For readability, keep paragraphs short. Also skip lines between paragraphs.
4. Keep e-mail messages fairly short. If you must send a lot of text, put some of it in one or more attachments.
5. Remember that e-mail isn’t private. So don’t include anything that is confidential—or that could be embarrassing.
6. When replying to e-mail, begin positively, for example by thanking the person for writing.
7. Be careful not to reply to a whole group if you want to reply to only the sender.
8. When sending a message to many people, use the “BCC” feature, so recipients don’t receive a long list of addresses.
9. If possible, avoid sending e-mail when you’re angry. Otherwise, you might send a message that you regret.
10. Before sending professional e-mail (for example, to a journal editor), proofread it carefully.

I hope that you find these tips useful. Now it’s time for me to answer some e-mail!