Tips to Avoid Common Mistakes in Email

Emails have become our daily part of communication. A person with a smartphone would receive at least 10-15 emails in a day on his/her email id that includes newsletters, marketing emails, standalone emails, and so on apart from essential emails. And in our professional life, it is highly important to document every communication that includes both receiving and sending which requires a major chunk of our productivity time in dealing with such flooded emails, but incautiously often we are gravitated to make email mistakes either consciously or subconsciously.

Just because the mistakes are bound to happen, it cannot be exempted making us immune, as someone quoted, ‘a mistake that keeps being repeated is not a mistake, it’s a choice’.

Common Email Mistakes

Below are some of the Common Email Mistakes that can be prevented with the contribution of small efforts from our side

• Use greetings and closings:

Greetings and closings are part of the email template. No matter how much ever you are familiar with the recipient it is advisable to use greetings and closings. Greetings would address the recipient whom you are writing to and closings will let them know who is writing the email.

• CC/BCC: 

If you tend to forget to mark CC/BCC, before writing an email give some time to think about who should be marked accordingly, and when you are certain about the recipients’ list start writing the email by marking them as copies.

• Reply-One? Reply-All!: 

You may receive an email that is marked with a group of recipients, but it doesn’t mean that every time the reply has to go to everyone. Sometimes the information is bound to restrict as per their jobs & responsibilities so based on the information edit the recipients’ list.

• Wrong email address:

 Due to the suggestions list, sometimes you may select the wrong person because of the same name or you may enter the wrong email id, so make sure you entered the correct email address to not expect the reply from the wrong recipient affecting your time frame.

• Subject: 

Writing an inappropriate subject is one of the common email mistakes. Many companies use email management software as in mailtrim to reduce the complexity in their work, which will sort the emails based on the subject. Hence, to get a prompt reply, you must write an appropriate subject.

• Formal: 

Don’t be informal either too formal in your email. Especially avoid using made-up names, be professional in maintaining correlation.

• Punctuations: 

Using appropriate punctuations wherever it is needed is as important as writing your message, otherwise the whole content would misinterpret your message and may appear gibberish.

• Repeated information:

Don’t write the same information in different paragraphs, which certainly disengages your recipient from reading it. Construct your information to give a chronological appeal to the email.

• Huge content: 

You may find it necessary to describe the message in lengthy paragraphs but the recipients may not share the same opinion. Use bullets, highlight the worthy sentences and words, which may interest them to read the whole content, or at least they wouldn’t miss reading the important points, yet it is highly advisable to be concise and precise with your words to engage with your content.

• Attachments:

 In few instances, we may tend to forget to attach the files or we may send wrong attachments, and unless the recipient informs us about it we may not realize it, eventually you will check on the attachment, and inevitably you have to one more email with an apology and correct attachment, which would consume your productive time in. Before sending an email make sure that you are attaching the correct file as sometimes you would have some confidential files which you don’t want to share with the wrong recipients. So to avoid such email mistakes save your files with accurate names.

• Abrupt reply:

 When the sender expects a reply from you, don’t just send it in a few words, as in a text message in chatting apps. Read their whole email properly and when its chain of emails is mapped to you, which may include emails from different members, it is very important to read all the emails to give a constructive reply, in regards to every member.

• Check before you send it!: 

Don’t be urged to send the email as soon as you have written it. Read the whole content to yourself and check it at least twice to avoid the mistakes like typing errors, missing the points. 

How to write an email without grammar mistakes?

Grammar mistakes are one of the habitual email mistakes, but having said that it doesn’t mean everyone will spare by ignoring it. Remember such errors will lead to miscommunication that would affect our image. Companies would judge on our communication skills based on our emails, especially when you are applying via emails for interviews.

• Proofreading is one of the key solutions to avoid grammar mistakes not only in emails but also it will help in your writings
• It's nothing wrong with going back to grammar basics. Read them whenever you have time.
• Read blogs, newspapers, novels that will help you with grammar
• If it is an important email better ask your seniors to evaluate it unless it’s confidential, another advantage is they may suggest you include certain points which are missing in it

Apologizing for email mistakes?

• As soon as you realize that you have sent an email with mistakes, don’t be late in addressing it
• Write an email requesting the recipient to ignore the last mail with an apology
• If the information mentioned in the email was wrong, write it in the new email to avoid miscommunication, as the recipient should aware of it
• For late replies, try to give an adequate and satisfactory explanation

Conclusion:

For our very own progress, it is best to think of writing as a task without any email mistakes. When it’s professional emails, it is better to adopt some practices as aforementioned in the above content, rather than surrendering yourself to common email mistakes.