Composing Professional Emails
How you present yourself online is often how your main impression comes across, especially in the digital age. As a generation who largely represents yourself through social media and online, understanding how to send an email with a professional tone is paramount as you approach college and navigate yourself through high school.
Here are a few tips to understanding an email:
Subject Line
Email Body
4. Sign Off
Tips for writing the perfect professional email:
Composing Professional Emails
How you present yourself online is often how your main impression comes across, especially in the digital age. As a generation who largely represents yourself through social media and online, understanding how to send an email with a professional tone is paramount as you approach college and navigate yourself through high school.
Here are a few tips to understanding an email:
- If you have more than two email addresses, separate them using a semicolon ( ; )
- CC means “Carbon Copy.” You include people in the email who should read the email, but who the email is not actually directed towards.
- For example, when you are writing your grade plans to your academic teacher and parents, you will CC your capstone teacher.
- For example, if you write an email to a teacher and want your parents to see what you’ve sent, but don’t want your teacher to know you’ve included your parents, you can “BCC” those people
Subject Line
- Always capitalize every first letter of every word in your subject line
- Do not capitalize prepositions (e.g. of, for)
- Make sure your subject is the main point of your email
- Avoid writing “READ THIS” or using all caps; it sounds aggressive
- Never write an email with no subject line; they often get overlooked and deleted in emails
Email Body
- Greeting
- Begin your email with a greeting
- Who are you writing the email to?
- Avoid using “Dear” -- it’s an antiquated greeting
- “Hi, ______:” or “Hi ________,” is the best way to begin your email.
- Begin your email with a greeting
- Body
- Begin with a positive comment toward the person you are writing
- “I hope you’re doing well.”
- “Thank you for taking the time to read this email.”
- What is the email about?
- “I know that my grades have been low, but wanted to send you a devised plan on how I plan to keep my grades up.”
- Continue with what you plan to write about in the email.
- Begin with a positive comment toward the person you are writing
- Thank whomever you are writing for taking the time to read the email
4. Sign Off
- End with a positive note
- “Thanks, Amy Smith”
- “With gratitude, Amy Smith”
- “Best wishes, Amy Smith”
Tips for writing the perfect professional email:
- Using emojis make you sound young and inexperienced.
- Avoid using repeated words. If you wrote “great” write a different word that’s a synonym to that.
- Double space after every sentence.
- Use correct grammar and spelling. Capitalize the beginning of every letter in every sentence.
- Avoid using too many exclamation marks ( ! )