emails

emails

1. Writing and receiving emails has become a common enough activity during the last ten years or so to warrant guidance comparable to that for writing letters (see letter forms). Generally speaking, emails tend to combine the immediacy of conversation with the formality or semi-formality of letter writing, a situation that gives rise to dangers. The main areas of uncertainty concern method of address, closing salutation, and level of formality (or style) in the message.

2. method of address.

A salutation (Dear —) is optional, and tends to raise the level of formality of the email. Affinities to conversation encourage much more casual salutations such as Hello —and Hi —, as in a hastily written message or in text messaging (see text message).

3. salutation.

Similarly, a closing salutation such as Yours or Yours sincerely increases the formality of the message. (If you feel the need to write Yours faithfully you should be writing a conventional letter with a proper letterhead.) It is quite legitimate to close the email with a simple statement of the sender's name, without any salutation. An intermediate solution is to use a more informal conversational salutation such as Best wishes or All the best.

4. level of formality.

The tendency is to err on the side of informality and even to omit punctuation and capitalization and to adopt the conventions of text messaging (i dont want to go to france this year do u). This is inadvisable except in the most informal communication with contacts the writer knows well enough not to offend by such an approach. Another habit, that of writing emails entirely in capital letters, should be avoided.