Hey, it's Annemarie with Speak Confident
English and this is exactly where you want to be every week to get the confidence
you want for your life and work in English. Now, of course, most of what we do is all about
confidence when speaking in English, but I also know that every day you're
probably writing some emails in English, especially if you use English at work. And I also know that you want your
writing to be easy to understand, clear and correct. You also want those emails
to be easy to write. So today we're a hundred percent
focused on how to write better emails in English and some common mistakes to avoid. Let's dive in right away with the first
of five tips to write better emails in English. The first one is always include a
greeting and make sure that it's correct, whether you're writing to a potential
new client for the very first time or a colleague that you see every day. It is always polite and friendly
to start with a greeting. Now I know that sometimes those
email conversations get really long. You might send an email to your colleague
to identify a date and a time for your next meeting. So you would start
that first email with Hey Susan, or hi Susan. And then over the next day, maybe there are 20 emails back and forth
as you try to decide on a date and a time. And when that happens, it's perfectly appropriate later in
that series of emails to stop using a greeting. But the very first
one should always have one. Now before I talk about how
to have the correct greeting, I've got an insider tip for you. I just talked about those long email
conversations where you go back and forth. In English, we call that an
email chain or a chain of emails. So again, in the first email you should always have
a greeting because it's professional, polite, and friendly. But as
you go through that email chain, it's perfectly appropriate
to stop using that greeting, especially with people you know well. Now the second thing about greetings
is to make sure that they are correct. And what that means is
knowing who you're writing to. You would be surprised by how many
emails I get every week that begin with, dear sir. I'm definitely not a sir, and what that tells me is the
writer has no idea who I am. I've got a question for you. If you get an email and the
greeting is completely wrong, how likely are you to read that
email or read it carefully? You're probably a little less likely to
read it or less interested because that person has no idea who you are. The greeting you use in your email is
the first impression your reader has and you want that impression to be
professional, polite, and friendly. Now, if you're not sure about which
greetings to use or what words to use, I've got a full lesson on that topic. I'll share a link in the video and
in the notes below the video as well. Tip number two is to have the
correct level of formality. Here's what I mean. If you have a colleague that you send
an email to three times a week or every day, you don't want to begin that
email with dear Ms. Fowler. It's way too formal for someone that you
email regularly and when our emails are too formal, they show a lot of distance. They're cold and unfriendly. So we want to be careful
about being too formal. But you also don't want to
be too informal too fast. For example, if you're writing
an email to a brand new client, you probably wouldn't start that
email with, Hey, what's up Susan? That kind of language is only appropriate
for someone you know well someone that you feel very close to. So it's all about finding that
right balance of formality. Now I know you might be feeling worried
right now about how to avoid being too formal and cold and how to avoid
being too informal too soon. And don't worry, I've got you covered. I actually have several lessons that
focus on language you should use in emails and language that allows you to
be polite and friendly in English. I'm going to share links to those so that
you can watch those as soon as you're finished with this one and get the
right language for your emails. Tip number three is especially important
if you're writing emails for work and you want to look like a professional,
make sure that your grammar, punctuation, and spelling are correct. This is a challenge for everyone,
including native speakers. We definitely start typing
too fast on the keyboard. We don't pay attention,
we don't read our emails, and sometimes that means there might
be a lot of mistakes and those mistakes look unprofessional. The more
you can reduce those errors, the better your emails are. And I know that this is an area that's
really challenging. Number number one, English spelling is a
nightmare. And number two, I know our grammar is difficult, but I have a super easy
solution for you and it's free. There's an app that I love to use on
my computer called Grammarly. In fact, my whole team uses it. Grammarly is the perfect place for you
to copy and paste your email to check your grammar, spelling, and punctuation. So if you're feeling nervous about
your grammar or spelling in an email, I'll leave a link to the Grammarly
application just below this video. It's totally free to use and it will
absolutely help you feel more confident when you're sending your emails.
Now, before I move on to tip four, let me give you an example of what an
unprofessional email with lots of spelling and grammar errors might look like. Take a look at this email and see if
you can identify some of the problems. You should immediately notice that words
like I'm or English aren't capitalized and in a professional email
they absolutely should be. You'll also notice that there's no space
between the first two sentences and that makes it very
difficult to read. Again, you want a space after the period and
the first word of a sentence should definitely be capitalized. Tip number four for writing better emails
in English is to always have a very clear subject line. I want you to think about your email
inbox for a moment and all the different emails you have. Which ones
are you more likely to read? You're probably more likely to read the
ones with a clear subject because you know exactly what the email is about. The other reason clear subject lines are
important is emails contain important details. Have you ever read an email and then
three days later you were trying to remember where you read that information
and you're searching through five or six or 27 different emails
to find that information? Well, it's much easier when the subject line
is clear and it's connected to the information in the email, so always make sure your
subject lines are very clear. Earlier we talked about those long
email chains that happen when the conversation goes back and forth. Sometimes during a long email chain, the subject of the conversation changes
and that's a great time for you to edit or change the subject of the email and
that will automatically make it easier for people to find the email information
they need when they're looking for it later. Now, if you're
not sure what I mean, let me give you a clear example
with these two subject lines. Number one is question about English. Number two is question about
dates. For fluency school. Which one of those is more specific? Definitely the second one. I know exactly what this person wants
or what information they're looking for, and the first email, I have no idea what
their question might be. It could be about English
people, English culture, English language about grammar,
spelling. I have no idea. It's very unclear. The more specific your subject line
is, the better it is for your reader. Tip number five for writing better
emails in English is to keep your emails short and only focus on
the most important details. This is one of the biggest challenges
my students have and it's one of the questions I hear the most. My students always want to know how
they can be more concise in an email. To be concise means to give a lot of
information in a very clear way without using too many words. That means we have to be very careful
about what we say in the email, how many details we provide
and what words we use. The opposite is when the email is
too long with big paragraphs that are difficult to read. Let me give you
an example. In this sample email, I'm showing you the beginning of someone
summarizing a meeting that took place. As you can immediately see, there's one big long paragraph and it's
hard to know what the important details or information might be in that paragraph. I have to be very careful
reading it and do it slowly. You'll also see that it's very wordy. What that means is there are too many
words and we actually repeat some words again and again. For example, you
can see the words meeting discussed, adjust multiple times in the email. It would be much simpler and better
if we only used those words once. So let me show you how
we can simplify that. There's one easy thing that we can do. Use bullet points and instead of writing
long sentences and full paragraphs, identify the most important details and
use a bulleted list or a numbered list to show that information and the bulleted
list makes it much easier for the reader to focus on the
important information. And those are your five tips for writing
better emails in English and avoiding some common mistakes. Just to
recap, those five tips are: always have a greeting and
make sure it's correct. Have the right balance of formality
in your email. Make sure your grammar, punctuation, and spelling are correct. Always use a subject line
that is clear and specific. And number five, keep your email concise. Now before we finish, I have
a challenge question for you. I want to know what is the best piece of
advice you've ever received for writing professional emails. You might have some advice that is
exactly what someone else needs today. It's very possible that someone in the
Confident English community is stressing out about what to write in an email today
and you might have the perfect piece of advice. So I would
love to hear what that is. You can share your advice with me just
below this video or in the comments of the online lesson before I finish. If
you found this lesson useful to you, I would love to know and you can tell
me in three simple ways. Number one, give this lesson a thumbs up on YouTube
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One of my lessons. Number two, you can share this with friends and
colleagues on Facebook or LinkedIn. And number three, if you have a friend or a colleague who
wants to write better emails in English, email them this lesson directly
with that, have a fantastic week. Thank you so much for joining me and
I'll see you next time for your Confident English lesson.
