Business English

kieszonkowy poradnik 

biznesowo-językowy

How to use a business mail

Use subjects effectively 4-6

Begin politely 6-7

The body of email 8-9

Use abbreaviations and acronyms wisely 9-11

Know how to end 11-13

Give your signature meaning 14

Before you press ‘attach’ 15

Vocabulary 15

Kieszonkowy poradnik biznesowo-językowy

Opracowanie: Bartosz Zieleźnik, Prochor Aniszczuk

Colorful Media ul. Lednicka 23, 60-413 Poznań

tel. 61 833 63 28, redakcja@business-english.com.pl

Zdjęcie na okładce: Syda Productions

How to write a business email

Subject: How to write a business email?

Dear readers,

Welcome to another part of BEM’s guide for improving your communication skills. In this issue we’re going to give you some advice on how to write better emails.

With our inboxes getting more and more congested every day, well-written emails are a key to success in business. I hope that this short guide will help you get a better grip on your everyday email writing at work.

Best regards,

Bartosz Zieleźnik b.zieleznik@colorfulmedia.pl

Due to the ever increasing popularity of email, traditional writing etiquette is becoming a thing of the past. Rather than going for a long, polite business letters, most people choose less formal styles of writing. Nowadays, nobody seems to have the time for fancy old-fashioned business letters. Email is mobile, fast and reliable. It lets us speed up our lives and businesses. But before you press ‘send’, think about some simple rules:

Use subjects effectively

Always fill in the subject field. Sending an email with no title does not look professional and some spam filters might not even let it through. Take the time to type in a short phase summarizing your email’s content. It is a good idea to use key-words, such as FYI (For Your Information), To do or Request. This way your recipients will immediately know what you expect of them, for example:

Request: Senior staff meeting, Mon, 4 p.m.

To do: monthly sales reports

FYI: updated delivery dates on new orders

Reminder: Tom’s birthday party, Friday

To make your message stand out in your recipient’s inbox, begin your subject line with: important or urgent, but avoid using special characters or ALL CAPS. Compare:

Important: missing invoice

Urgent: customer complaints

---!!WHERE IS THE MISSING INVOICE??---

@@@@@ customer complained AGAIN !!!!!!!!!

Using a previous subject to write about something new will make you look disorganized. Long chains of ‘RE: RE: RE: RE: FW: RE: RE: FW: RE: RE:’ are quite common among colleagues, but look really clumsy when writing to a customer. Changing the title every now and then will also help you browse the ‘chat’ history more effectively making important parts of the conversation easier to retrieve.

Another thing to remember while creating the subject of your email is to leave out unnecessary articles and adjectives. Compare:

A new interesting stationary deal from our trusted supplier New internal document layouts for the accounting department

New stationary deal from the supplier

New layouts for accounting

Don’t be too vague, though. Avoid titles that say nothing, such as:

Quick question

Invitation

About Friday

Meeting

Important information

Finally, in some companies people use only the subject line to relate a short message. Such emails are identified by adding EOM (End Of Message) at the end of the title.

This lets your recipients get the necessary information without additional clicking to view the email body. This is highly ap-preciated by professionals who receive a large volume of mail every day.

Please return our stapler EOM

Customer Service Dept. meeting is moved to 4 p.m. EOM 

Please come to my office at 8 a.m. EOM

10 confirmed for Tuesday. Will you need a larger room? EOM

Subject: spam

The word ‘spam’ which we use to describe unwanted mail was inspired by a comedy routine on the British television series Monty Python’s Flying Circus. It originally meant: ‘sp(iced) (h)am’- canned meat product made by the Hormel Foods Corporation

VOCABULARY

congested – zatłoczony

to get a grip – opanować

etiquette – etykieta

fancy – wyrafinowny

to speed up – przyspieszyć

to type in – wpisać

to summarize – podsumować

immediately – natychmiast

to stand out – wyróżniać się

special character – znak specjalny

disorganized – zdezorganizowany

clumsy – niezgrabny

to browse – przeglądać

to retrieve – odzyskać

to leave out – opuszczać

stationary – art. biurowe

vague – niejasny

to relate – przekazać

stapler – zszywacz

volume – ilość

comedy routine – skecz

canned – puszkowany

manner – sposób

full stop – kropka

abbreviation - skrót

default – domyślny

handheld – przenośny

asterisk – gwiazdka (*)

to skim - przeglądać

to shower sb with sth – zalewać kogoś czymś

on the flip side – z drugiej strony

to sepcify – określić

appropriate – odpowiedni

outgoing – przyjazny

to bounce a message back – odesłać/ odrzucić wiadomość

handful – garść