Exactly How Much Emphasis?

Keep an eye on your communication style as you write, and if you find that you frequently use negative terms, make an effort to replace them with more positive ones. The idea is to say what something is instead of what something isn’t. By doing so, we are focusing on solutions instead of problems. There seems to be a mistake in the document. This is when you’ll want to refrain from using the word you. You know you have to point out the mistake, but why not let the person save face and maintain your relationship with them? These small changes can have a big impact on how others perceive you. If you’re unsure about your tone in an email, try reading it objectively as if you had just received it from someone else. Moreover, it can be useful to read your writing out loud to see how it sounds. Reading your writing aloud will also help you improve the clarity of your message and make it sound more natural. There are certain nuances of tone to consider when writing in our professional lives, but when it comes to our personal lives, we have it so much easier. We can even use multiple emojis in a row to show emphasis. Exactly how much emphasis? That’s up for interpretation.

One Piece At A Time

Three crying laughing emojis in a row used to pack a lot of punch, but now it seems to be a fairly common response to anything slightly humorous. Let’s say you’ve been waiting a long time for your boss to answer an important email from last week. Hilarious, sure, but not something you can do in a professional setting. If you’re using a lot of buzzwords and complicated terms, you could end up looking insincere or overly salesy. Essentially, if you write in simpler language, there’s a higher chance your words will be perceived as true. Wait, should I not have used the word multisyllabic? If you want people to understand you and believe in your message, keep it short and simple. And easy to read quickly. Imagine opening an email and seeing nothing but five massive blocks of text. There are about ten lines per paragraph. Just words on words on words. How do you feel looking at this monstrosity of a message? I just shuddered at the very thought of it. Sounds like a delete, claim you never received it, and hope for the best type of email.

Say What You Say

Your goal when writing is to do the opposite of this. To save yourself loads of time and make sure people actually read your words, only write what’s absolutely necessary. There’s no need to spend time writing six paragraphs when two will get your point across. You can even have one sentence stand on its own for emphasis. Speaking of sentences, we want those to be short as well. Do your best to keep them as clear and concise as possible. Everyone will appreciate you for it. Using bullet points is another excellent way to create white space and boost the readability of your messages. Any time you’re listing more than one thing, you can shoot some bullets into your writing. It also helps that bullets force you to use concise language instead of a bunch of extra details. If you’ve got large chunks of text, try to break a few of them down into bullet points to shorten your message and make it easier to consume. We’ll begin at the very top.

The Show Must Go On

The receiver should be able to prioritize the email’s importance without opening it. Your subject line needs to be searchable so it’s easy to find for both you and the recipient in the future. Sending a vague subject line like Proposal or Request for Information will make your message difficult to find down the road. After all, which proposal is this? What information are you requesting? When they want to refer back to it, they can search Your Company Name Proposal and find it right away. If you just titled it Proposal they’d have to scroll through every email with the word proposal in the title. Small things like this are important for your success. This is the most common way of writing greetings, but if you want to get technical, the correct way of writing this from a grammatical perspective is with another comma in between the greeting and the person’s name. Hi, Nolan, Good morning, Jesse. Which style you choose will depend on who you’re sending the message to and how formal you want to be. What if you’re writing to multiple people? If you’re sending an email to 1 to 3 people, list each of their names in the greeting. Even if it might be safe to send Hey Evan, to your best work pal, it’s better to avoid getting into the Hey habit. It’s just a little too casual and not worth the risk of sounding unprofessional. I hope you’re doing well. I hope you’re having a great week. I hope you enjoyed your weekend. Thanks for your message. Thanks for getting back to me. I appreciate your quick response. Would you mind providing the following information? Would you please send those files by end of day Thursday? Make sure to include when you’d like the action completed if you need something done within a certain time frame. If you’re sending a longer email that includes information on various topics, the body of your message will be structured differently. Begin by introducing the main subject and providing background information. Then, copy and paste the questions from the original email and write your answers beside them in blue or whatever you chose. When can I expect to see results? Most clients start noticing changes within the first 2 weeks of the program. Is there a payment plan now? Yes, you have the option of splitting the cost over six monthly payments. This makes it noticeably easier for them to follow and understand. No questions asked, and no hard feelings!