By Dana P Skopal, PhD
Emails are a part of daily life, but work emails can make us feel overwhelmed and drowning in to-do-tasks. How do you start to read and reply to work emails? Have you thought about how and where you place information when writing emails – that is, have you thought about the reader?
When a person has so many emails to read, what do they do? Do they apply a range of reading strategies? Most people would skim the subject line and make a series of quick decisions. The options are to skip the email, read the first paragraph, or, if still interested, then maybe skim-read the full message. A reader would engage with the full email message if the topic was important with urgently required actions. So your message needs to be clearly presented if you require immediate action.
A work email is to convey information and often requests some response. To engage a reader and get a response to the email, a writer should not waffle or tell a long story. Too many technical details can also lose a reader. For example, if there is a deadline looming, a writer should convey that in the subject line. A clear action statement in the subject line can make a reader take notice, rather than generic wording such as ‘supply issues’ or ‘response required’.
In our blogs, we often use the word ‘key’, for example ‘relevant key information’ or ‘key items your reader needs to understand’. In our writing workshops, I am continually explaining how to place your key message upfront. Whether reading on a computer screen or mobile phone, your reader should be able to know what they need to do with the information without having to scroll down to the end of the message. Tell your reader what they need to do and why this is important within the first two paragraphs. Next, coherently lay out the technical details or attach them in a document.
In our email-life, a reader makes many decisions about what to read and how much to read. So as email writers, it is our responsibility to write clearly and succinctly to get our message across and acted on.
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