- Proofread before sending. A second look will help you spot mistakes. A useful habit is to read a text aloud — this helps you hear any unnatural sentences. To sharpen your writing, install Grammarly — a browser extension that highlights typos.
- Check for readability. Use Hemingway Editor, a free resource that rates your text in terms of how easy it is to read.
- Don’t rush. Writing an email when in a hurry is an invitation to disaster: typos, wrong attachments, excessive emotions, etc.
- Double-check attachments. Make sure you’ve added the right files in the correct formats. Pay special attention to GIFs to make sure they’re playable.
- Write useful emails. Last but not least — no amount of exclamations, capital letters and emojis will save an email that recipients don’t find helpful. Make value your priority.
- Add recipients last. This will prevent you from accidentally sending an incomplete and unchecked email.
- Misusing To/Cc and Bcc fields
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When choosing the recipient, you have three options: To, Cc and Bcc. The default option is To but what about the other two?
Cc stands for carbon copy — a copy of this email will be sent to a Cc address and all the recipients can see each other. Use Cc when you want to add meaningful contributors to a conversation or keep those people in the loop.
Bcc stands for blind carbon copy — a copy will be sent to a Bcc address but no recipient from the To and Cc fields can see it. Bcc is like the incognito mode. If the Bcc address replies though, it gets found out.
I’m sending an email to Ana and a copy to Kay. However, neither of them knows that Colin will also receive it
