Please Stop Barking: How to Write a Professional Email

Email is the most common form of written communication in the business world, and yet many folks become tone-deaf whenever they sit down to compose one of these brief messages. Too often their words snap, growl, and bark at the reader--as if being concise meant that you had to sound bossy. Not so.

Take a look at this email message recently sent to all staff members on a large university campus:

"It is time to renew your Faculty/Staff parking decals. New decals are required by Sep. 1, 2006. Parking Rules and Regulations require that all vehicles driven on campus must display the current decal."

Consider how much nicer and shorter and likely more effective this email might be if we simply added a "please" and addressed the reader directly:

"Please renew your Faculty/Staff parking decals by September 1."

Of course, if the author of the email had been keeping his readers in mind, he might have remembered to include another useful bit of information: a brief explanation as to how and where to renew the decals.

For more advice on "writing email that actually gets read," check out Steve Bass's article "Email: Be Less Annoying."