Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Work-Appropriate E-mails

This week I got two e-mails from writers that made me cringe and, more importantly, made me put off responding for a day or two. The e-mails were rife with smiley faces and emoticons - something highly unprofessional.

When sending an e-mail to a business contact, even when you know them well or have been in contact for months, its important to keep the professional framework. Excessive use of exclamation marks, missing punctuation, emoticons and trendy abbreviations might be acceptable when writing your family and friends. It is not acceptable to send these to business contacts who you are trying to form a serious business relationship with. The content of the e-mail doesn't need to be altered just keep it 'grown-up'.

For instance there is a big difference between the two paragraphs below:

I just got off the phone with ABC Celebrity!!!! ;) She was SOOO great 2 talk 2 and has tons of ideas about the TV industry and other celebs. I'll write up my notes and put 2gether an article by Thur. :) The readers are going to love it, SRSLY!! :8

I just got off the phone with ABC Celebrity. She was so great to talk to and has tons of ideas about the TV industry and other celebrities. I'll write up my notes and put together an article by Thursday. The readers are going to love it, seriously.

Which would you prefer to read? Which would you want to give another writing assignment to?

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