10 Business English EMAIL Writing Common Mistakes

Email is a great way to

professionally connect with people

It's a great way to communicate for work and we often

experience first impressions via email even as much or more than first impressions in

person

Welcome to go natural English. It's me, Gabby Wallace

And today we are talking about how to not make one of these common mistakes

that might be annoying people or

Ruining your professional relationships at work by email

So let's take a look because last week we talked about how to connect when you're networking

Professionally for your business for your career for your work and how to stay in touch with new

Contacts or new friends and now that you have their contact information

Well, you want to write an email, but you want to make sure that it looks good

so let's make sure that

You're not doing one of these mistakes and as you're watching

I would love to know which one of these you find to be the most

annoying the most irritating

for me, it's probably number one and

number ten the first and the last now if you watch this and you can think of more annoying

Unprofessional email mistakes that you've experienced share them in the comments. Help us out

Nobody wants to be annoying by email. So these are points that I've personally

experienced and also that my

Colleagues have told me annoy them very much. So let's jump into it

Number one. I'm inappropriate

Greeting now this has to do with culture in North America in work culture

We do not say dear sir, dear

Madam, I know maybe in other parts of the world this seems really normal. But when I get an email that says

Dear madam, or especially dear sir, because I am NOT a sir

I am actually a madam but madam songs. Are we need to?

Formal, so I get an email that says dear sir or madam. I almost automatically delete it

why because I know that that person doesn't know me and they're probably

Trying to sell me something because it sounds totally

disconnected way too formal and

Honestly kind of weird so a more appropriate greeting that works in pretty much any situation

It's high plus the person's name. You definitely want to

Address the person by name. Alright guys. So now, you know when you're writing me an email you can say hi, Gabby

Also quick side note. We don't use titles like teacher teacher Gabby

Sounds really weird. I know you mean all the best by it

But if you want to sound more natural if you want to write your work emails more like a native

Don't use titles like this. So it depends on the situation, but make sure you're addressing people as they want to be addressed

Number too often I get emails with the longest subject lines because people are writing the actual email

Content in the subject line. So I think it's really funny because it's confusing

That's not what a subject line is for a subject line is to give a general idea

Of why you're writing. So what do you want?

What is the purpose of this email and be specific?

But not so detailed that you're writing more than like ten words because that should go in the body of the email

So on the other hand, don't be super generic like hi Gabby, you know you want to be more specific like hi

Gabby I met you at the

Conference last week or I met you at conference named last week or nice to meet you

But even that sounds kind of generic and you know what happens when people see generic subject lines

They think it's spam and nowadays

There's so much spam so you don't want to go to the spam folder avoid that by making your subjects

Clear so why are you writing? What is the purpose of the email what you want?

See if you can write that concisely in just a few words number three not

introducing yourself

So who are you if it's the first time you're writing an email?

make sure the person receiving your email knows who you are and why you are writing so introduce yourself and your

Relation to the person you're writing to or what you hope to achieve by

Writing to them a little bit of background like one or two sentences

not your complete life story, please but a couple

Background sentences is super helpful for that person to put you and your email in

context

number four

Speaking of telling your entire life story number four is not getting to the point of the email quickly guys

Don't make a coffee sit down put on your favorite album and craft an hour-long

Email because this is not novel writing

This should be direct simple clear information in emails

The purpose of an email is not to be poetic. It's not literature

Please writing more words does not mean that it's a better email

The best emails are straight to the point and make it really clear why you're writing

number five kind of related one big long paragraph

This is really hard to read. So I prefer really short paragraphs of two to three sentences

maximum again

This is not a novel you are not writing Jane Eyre you are writing a business

Memo in your email keep it short because you know, a lot of people are getting a hundred emails every day

Plus their Facebook messages plus their Instagram direct messages plus whatever else. I don't know

What's app messages plus phone calls? So make sure that you write in an organized way. That's easy

The eyeballs if you have a list

bullet points numbers are

appreciated make it

Aesthetically pleasing so people don't have to do this when they're reading like what is this? I just got lost

I don't know what I'm reading. This happens to me all the time

You guys break it up brick brick break it up into paragraphs, please move it along

number six being overly emotional

With exclamation points lots of exclamation points everywhere after every single sentence three exclamation points

Five exclamation points ten and something come on guys anything you have to write in an email, you know

You can express your emotion with one exclamation point but when you use exclamation points after every single sentence

It doesn't make you look excited. It makes you look nutty overly emotional

It could be taken the wrong way and when everything is exciting, how do you know when something is?

especially

exciting you just don't know so keep the escalation points to a minimum and

on that note

Emojis emojis smiley faces, they are not professional

Avoid them this is good for texts

It's good for instant messages, but not in a business email. It makes you look a little bit

not so professional

now disclaimer if you write me an email, I will probably

respond with some emojis because I think they're fun and

I like to treat my students in a friendly way

So this is also a matter of opinion if you want to be

More professional more formal don't use the emojis if you're trying to be taken more seriously

Don't use smiley faces

If you want to be more friendly and fun and casual

Go ahead. Let them loose and to round out number six about being overly emotional when you write in all capital letters

It looks like you are guys so

Let's keep the punctuation

Normal cap with a letter to start the sentence and the rest of the letters unless it's an acronym

should be lower case unless it's a pronoun like I

unless it's a proper noun like

Boston University it can be a lowercase letter

We do not use abbreviations like lol or laughing noises like haha in

Email that is supposed to be

Professional so don't use these unless you're texting or sending an instant message and on that note

Unfortunately humor, especially

Sarcasm does not translate well in text so I would avoid that completely if you don't want

misunderstandings because

Sarcasm humor can be really hard to read literally in emails

so again, just keep it short simple straight to the point be a straight shooter when you write your emails and you won't have

Misunderstandings this can be really embarrassing when you meant something to be funny and then the other person takes it as straightforward

Oh my gosh. This has definitely happened to me before so I'm telling you from experience

not

double checking

Your email spelling grammar and who you're sending it to?

So you want to make sure that you give yourself at least a minute to just review everything reread your email?

Double-check that email address that you're sending it to I have received a lot of emails for Gabriel

Gabriela and other Gabby's out there in the world and I'm telling you it's pretty funny when it happens

But you don't want that to happen to you. So check that email address check that name. I have received so many emails

For other English learning websites out there and I think that's pretty funny, too. But again,

Check the name make sure that you're not just copying and pasting

Make sure that you have the name spelled correctly you guys GA BB. Why not?

1b but - I'm a good buddy

But you don't say like that, please those there like that. And what else do you want to double check your spelling double?

Check your grammar

Grammar check if there is a red squiggly line

There is a high probability that you may have spelled something wrong or it may be grammatically incorrect

So take a minute because oftentimes, you know what the correct spelling and grammar is but we all make careless mistakes

So take a minute. Check that over

boom-boom-boom address lines

greeting spelling and grammar and

Did you end with an appropriate? Goodbye?

respectfully best regards my best

thank you all great choices and my favorite or maybe my unfavorite is

Expecting a response right away. I am guilty

I get excited when I send emails and I want that response like yesterday, especially if it's something

important where if I'm

Nervous or worried about something. Of course. I want to know the response right away. Of course

I want someone to respond within three seconds, but email is not like that and generally

Business emails are responded to within a two to three day period Monday through Friday working day is 9:00 a.m. To 5:00 p.m

Don't get bent out of shape if they don't respond right away

don't send multiple emails if they haven't responded yet if

Five days go by

Generally speaking and you haven't gotten a response. Then you might want to follow up on it

Okay, if it's super urgent if three to four days have gone by and you still haven't heard about it

And you are just dying a slow does inside then maybe follow up on it, but always be kind

Alright always be kind because you don't know what the other person

on the other side of that email on the other side of that computer screen is going through they could have a rough day and

Your kindness via email your beautifully spaced

paragraphs your nice

salutation

Greeting your goodbye your beautiful three four email could really make their day

It could really make my day if you'd like to send me more email. I would love that

You can actually sign up for my email list at gonaturalenglish.com

and I will send you my

best tips by email my best free tips by email now if you're curious about

what to write in those beautiful paragraphs if you would like to know what phrases are common and

professional and also

Idiomatic to make you sound really natural when you're writing your business email in English then

Stay around make sure that you subscribe for next week's video. We're gonna talk about top 10 phrases

We're gonna talk about the top 10 phrases that you should use in your work email

So I can't wait to talk to you next week Oh Wednesday 10:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time

and while you're waiting

I highly recommend that you meet me right over here to watch last week's video about how to connect and network

With new friends and colleagues and if you've already seen that one well then let's meet over here to see

Conversation control phrases that you can use to have better

Conversation. This is a really awesome lesson. So I'll see you here, and then I'll see you over here. Alright. Thanks. Bye