Writing A Good Email
Most Pakistani learners, when asked to write a professional email for the first time, write a small letter to the British Crown. Respected sir, I hope this email finds you in the best of health and high spirits. With du…
There is more than one way to understand this. If you have only been taught one, you have been taught less than you deserve.
There is more than one way to understand this. If you have only been taught one, you have been taught less than you deserve.
Most Pakistani learners, when asked to write a professional email for the first time, write a small letter to the British Crown. Respected sir, I hope this email finds you in the best of health and high spirits. With due respect, I am writing to bring into your kind notice. You can hear the heavy desk and the wooden ruler in those sentences. The person on the other end of the email is a busy human in Karachi or Toronto with thirty unread messages. They will read three lines. Make those three lines count.
A working email has four parts. Subject line. Greeting. Body. Sign-off. Each one short. The subject line is the only sentence many readers see before deciding whether to open. Bad subject: Important inquiry regarding your services. Good subject: Logo redesign for Lahore bakery, budget 25k. The good one tells the reader what is inside, what it is worth, and where it came from. They open it because they already know what to do.
Body. Three sentences if you can. Sentence one, what you want. Sentence two, why it makes sense for the reader. Sentence three, what happens next. Watch the difference. Old way, six lines: With reference to your esteemed advertisement on Facebook, I would like to humbly request that you kindly consider my application for the said vacancy. I am a B Com graduate from Punjab University and I have keen interest in your reputed organisation. I am attaching my CV for your kind perusal and look forward to your kind response at your earliest convenience.
New way, three lines: I saw your Facebook ad for an accounts assistant and would like to apply. I have a B Com from Punjab University and one year of part-time bookkeeping for a Gulberg cloth shop. CV attached, available for an interview any morning next week. Same information. Half the words. Twice the respect, because the reader's time has been respected. The world of work is not waiting to be flattered. It is waiting to be helped.
Sign-off. Pick one and stick with it. Best, Thanks, or Regards. Then your name. If you are writing from your phone, do not add the line sent from my mobile, please excuse typos. The reader does not need permission to find a typo, and the line tells them you did not proofread. Send it from a desktop or hold the email in drafts and read it once more before pressing send. Most communication problems in Pakistani offices are not language problems; they are speed problems.
Estimated time: 13 min