Email DOs and DON'Ts - Learn best practices for writing email in English

Subject: Posting schedule

(comma)

(period)

Looks good. Send.

All email messages have the same basic parts.

Recipients are the people who the message is addressed to.

They receive and read the message.

The sender writes and sends the message.

The subject heading is the title you give to your message.

It lets your reader know what your message is about.

The body is the main text of your message.

Note how most messages will have some kind of greeting

and closing.

But not always.

And we'll talk more about that later.

Let's look at another example.

Here's a message to Bruce.

The message still needs a subject heading,

so let me type that in.

Quiz software

Okay.

Okay. If we send this, we should get a reply.

Let's look at that.

Now watch what happens as a third person

is brought into this discussion.

This message presents something that we haven't talked about yet.

Look at the recipients.

Do you see that Cc?

Maybe you know how to use this,

but do you know what Cc stands for?

Cc refers to carbon copy recipients.

The sender isn't writing directly to these people,

but the sender wants these recipients to stay informed.

Bcc refers to blind carbon copy recipients.

The names and addresses of these recipients are hidden from view.

It's a nice way to send a message to multiple recipients

and keep all of their names and addresses private.

There aren't really rules that you must follow every time you write an email.

But I believe there are best practices.

So let me share some general DOs and DON'Ts

when it comes to writing email.

Unless it's a very informal message.

But it kind of looks like texting.

Let me show you what I mean.

Compare this text and how it looks

to this.

The second format it easier to read.

Here's what you can do.

That's a series of replies on one subject.

I hope you found this lesson useful.

That's all for now. Happy studies!