How to Make Your Emails Sound Conversational: Pleasantries in English

Let's look at an email between two friends.

Adam is writing to Niko, and he sends this.

Well, everything is clear,

but compare that to this.

There's a lot more text here.

Some of it could be dropped,

but some of it is really nice...

I mean pleasant.

From saying hello to asking how things are going,

all of these words are called pleasantries.

- Things you say to be friendly and polite.

Let's talk more about this.

There's some overlap between business and personal email.

Perhaps it's because email in general tends to sound conversational.

So when you write to close colleagues,

you probably use a lot of the same language

that you use with friends and neighbors.

Also, email tends to be brief,

but not as abbreviated as a text message.

People often take the time to include some pleasant remark

before getting to the main purpose of the message

as you saw in the model.

Here are some common phrases used at the beginning of a message.

These pleasantries appear after the greeting.

All of these questions and statements are appropriate for friendly emails.

Sometimes people include a final pleasantry toward the end of a message

just before the closing.

You'll notice in some of those expressions

that words were dropped.

For example: Hope to hear back from you soon.

The write left out the subject "I."

In less formal email, we tend to omit certain words

to make communication go faster.

Let's take a look at Niko's reply to Adam.

Can you spot some pleasantries in this message?

Here they are.

In this fast-paced world we may not always have the time for pleasantries,

but they're usually appreciated.

Remember that.

That's all for now. Thanks for watching and happy studies!

Remember to visit www.englishwithjennifer.com for more practice.