E-MAILS Amity School of Engineering and Technology

Submitted To: Ms. Lekha Rani Singh Submitted By: Madhur Kukreti A2305209118 Roll No. 2118

Amity University, Uttar Pradesh

E-MAILS
The phenomenally rapid growth of the internet and its widespread use in business has changed the way in which organizations communicate. Email is not just a quick, easy and relatively cheap way to keep in touch with family and friends, it has also become an essential tool in business, a fundamental part of the way in which we work. Like business letters and memos, e-mail messages help to reinforce professional and business relations. Everyday business dealings and ordinary activities of business would not be possible without e-mail. E-mail can be used both as a means to reach out to people outside an organization, and to send information within an organization. Advantages of E-mail A great advantage of e-mail is that the recipient can seek clarification on any matter immediately and receive a response within minutes.

Even when the communication needs are bulky and span multiple megabytes of information, e-mail allows the sending of such documents (for example, reports, notes, slides, sound files, graphics, etc.) easily as e-mail attachments.

The recipient can respond with immediate feedback upon receiving these documents. You can communicate quickly with anyone on the internet. E-mail usually reaches its destination in a span of minutes or seconds.

Thousands of e-mail messages can be easily saved, and you can search message files electronically.

Some e-mail services allow you to access to a printer-friendly version of e-mail messages. Most e-mail system has a reply button that enables you to include all or part of the original message when you are writing a reply. This feature is a small one, but it really speeds replying to messages. In composing a letter or even when making a phone call, people spend a lot of time establishing a context for their reply. E-mail is not anonymous-each message carries the return address of the sender but you can write to anyone with an internet address.

All the messages appear the same to the person who gets the email. The messages are generally judged on the basis of what is in them, not where they are from. The receiver of an e-mail is not interrupted during work when a particular message comes to the mailbox. He/she can handle emails according to her/his own time and convenience. Limitations of E-mail

E-mail is editable. Everyone who receives a message may intentionally or unintentionally alter it before they send it out. The receiver cannot be sure the e-mail as he has received it is unaltered from its original form. As a result, he often gets incomplete or incorrect information.

E-mail is anonymous. The identity of a messages author can be completely masked or lost in just two generations of the message. You can never be certain where an e-mail really came from.

E-mail cannot be retracted. Once you hit the send button, theres no bringing it back. E-mail cannot be tracked. Despite what hundreds of hoaxes claim, the technology to globally track an e-mail message does not exist. There is no way for a third party to know to whom or how many times you forward a message. E-mail is not necessarily private. Since messages are passed from one system to another, and sometimes through several systems or networks, there are many opportunities for someone to interrupt or read e-mail.

Some e-mail system can send or receive text files only. Even though you can send and receive images, programs, files produced by word processing programs, or multimedia messages, some recipients may not be able to properly view your message. It is possible to forge e-mail. This is not common, but it is possible to forge the address of the sender. You may want to take steps to confirm the source of some e-mail you receive.

 You can receive too much unwanted mails. You can receive junk e-mail in the same way you receive other types of junk mail. On the internet junk mail is called spam. You may have to take active steps to delete the e-mail you receive and try to stop it from being sent to you in the first place.

You may not know about the person with whom you are communicating. The communication is often all in text and it is possible for us to get an incorrect impression of the person sending us e-mail. Also, some people misrepresent themselves.

Writing Effective E-mails

E-mail is a written form of communication. All the rules relevant to written communication are applicable to e-mails also. The Subject Line It is the subject line that the reader will be reading before going through the actual message. People receive a large number of e-mails every day. They often find it a wearisome task to go through all of them. So they first look at the subject line. If the subject line fails to catch their attention, they move on to the next e-mail. So give your message a relevant, specific and appropriate subject line. The subject line Should be brief, Need not be a complete sentence, and Must contain a clue to the contents of the message A subject line like information about school books does not convey much. It should have specified the standard and the subject. Greeting Greeting is a desirable courtesy in the beginning. We do not need to be formal and write Dear Mr. Sanyal or My dear Mrs. Jain. But we must include an informal greeting like Hello Aditya or Hi Ananya. When the message begins with a greeting like these, the person knows that the message is meant for them and that they are not receiving a CC (Courtesy Copy). Complimentary Close Similarly, there is no need to include a formal complimentary close like Yours sincerely, R.K. Gupta. You also do not need to include expressions like with warm regards/ kind regards. Such expressions have become meaningless through overuse. But do put your name at the end of the message. That is an indication that your message is over. Besides, the name itself conveys your regards. Proper Organisation E-mail messages are transmitted fast but that does not mean that they should be composed also at the same speed. Messages that are not

properly planned and organised turn out to be vague and incoherent and irritate the reader. So ensure proper organisation of your message. Formatting E-mail messages should be properly formatted. Formatted messages give a good look besides gaining in terms of clarity and urgency. Use bullets / markers / numbers so that the recipient can instantaneously grasp the details of the message. Use blank space generously. Long, verbose, tightly typed messages look boring and oppressive. Complete and Precise Messages Make your e-mail messages precise but complete in every respect. Dont omit; dont repeat; dont include anything irrelevant.

The Language of E-mails

The language used in your e-mails should be such that they are easy to read, understand and respond to. Take special care of the following points: Your paragraphs should be short, crisp and focussed. The first sentence of each paragraph should suggest its theme. Use appropriate sentence linkers to make each paragraph a coherent whole. Use short and simple sentences. An e-mail is no place to demonstrate with what ease you can handle complex structures or how rich your vocabulary is. The simpler your language, the more effective your message will be. It is preferable to use the active voice. Instead of writing These accounts are to be settled by tomorrow evening, it is better to write Settle these accounts by tomorrow evening. However, use your own judgement to ascertain what kind of sentences will be more effective. Use concrete words with positive connotations. Dont use jargon and slangs. Slangs belong to the realm of spoken language. They are likely to be misunderstood and may leave a bitter taste in the mouth. A little jargon might be in order while interacting with colleagues of your own profession. But dont use jargon merely to impress others or to camouflage your ignorance.

In business e-mails, dont use abbreviations and acronyms which you may use while e-mailing personal friends. However, some of them may be used if you think your reader will be familiar with them. You may add to this list or not use any of them. There is no hard and fast rule about it. Only, make sure that your acronyms and abbreviations do not obstruct clarity and do not make your reader feel dismayed and irritated because he does not understand what you have written. Adopt the you attitude while writing your e-mail. Use I, me, and mine very sparsely. Replace these words with you, your, yours etc. The you words are likely to create a favourable impact.

Make sure that your message is grammatically correct. It has no spelling errors, and it is correctly punctuated. While punctuation

errors may distort the meaning, bad grammar and bad spellings irritate. Remember that your message is not only your reflection as a person but is your companys representative. So do not convey a poor impression about yourself and your company through errors that could be avoided with a little care. Use conventional rules of capitalisation. Be gender-sensitive. Avoid using gender-discriminatory words as far as possible.

Twelve Golden Rules for Effective E-mails

In the last section, you had some tips on the language appropriate to emails. Given below are a few general guidelines.
1. Be prompt in responding to your e-mails. Fastness is one of the

main advantages of e-mail. But if you sleep over e-mails, that advantage is immediately neutralised. 2. As a rule, the length of your message should be kept to one screen only. If your message exceeds one screen, begin with the most important details and give other points in order of their importance. 3. Limit the lines of your e-mail to 80 characters (60 characters if the e-mail is to be forwarded). 4. If there is a file or document you want to send to your reader, send it as an attachment with your e-mail. 5. If you are answering a query, or responding to a request, refer to the e-mail your response is related to right in the beginning so that the receiver is absolutely clear what you are talking about.
6. If the message requires the reader to do something, the action

required must be spelt out in very specific terms. The part of the message related to the action should be so worded and placed so conspicuously (using bullet marks / numbers / bold letters / underlining that the reader does not have to read the message twice to know what he / she is being asked to do. 7. Use the appropriate level of formality. In this respect, an e-mail is no different form a business letter.
8. Your language should reflect your courteousness. Tone is an

important supplement to a verbal message. It conveys the speakers emotions and properly reinforces the message. Unfortunately, the tone can not be conveyed through the written word. But we can definitely use such words as convey friendliness, politeness and consideration. Sarcastic language should be strictly avoided in emails.

9. Politeness does not cost anything but it brings rich dividends. So be polite and warm-hearted. But remember that politeness is not a matter of language alone. It must spring from the heart.
10. Make a very discriminating use of courtesy copies (ccs). Since

sending an e-mail is not heavy on your pocket, it is no reason why a cc should be sent to everybody. Peoples inboxes are overflowing with meaningless e-mails. So dont add to the problem. (Dont send a cc to everyone you know; just send a cc to people who need to know). 11.Double-check the receivers e-mail address. A mistake in a single character is likely to send the e-mail to a wrong address. 12.Check that the computers internal clock and date settings are correct before you send your e-mail.

Three Donts of E-mails

Dont send sensitive, critical or confidential company information through e-mails.

E-mails have a mysterious way of reaching people they are not intended for. Merely deleting an e-mail from your system does not ensure that it has been permanently destroyed. It may still be there in the computers hard drive or in backup storage devices at your receivers end. You never know who is going to read your e-mail. So it is better to exercise caution and avoid using e-mail to send sensitive information. Dont highlight a message unless it is absolutely necessary. An urgent message certainly be highlighted as Most urgent, or Read now! Urgent, or Top priority. But if you make a practice of highlighting all your e-mails, the word urgent will lose all sense of urgency. Dont over-use capital letters Dont write your message using only capital letters (or only small letters). Using only capital letters, often called flaming, suggests shouting or screaming. That would be rude. Using only small letters suggests a weak personality, a vacillating mind or indecisiveness.

Netiquette: Etiquette for Online Communication

When we interact within a family, a community or a society, when we attend a meeting or a get-together, when we receive guests or go somewhere as guests, we are expected to follow certain etiquette, in the absence of which we might offend others. Etiquette, in simple words, means a set of rules for good behaviour. Internet Etiquette, also known as netiquette is a set of rules for behaving properly online, for writing emails, using the Internet, or blogging. If we follow netiquette, it will save us from offending others, from misunderstanding what others say, or from taking offence where no offence is intended. It will help us to minimise our mistakes on cyberspace. 1. Remember that we are dealing with real human beings. While communicating electronically, we only see a computer screen in front of us. And a computer screen is all that our correspondent sees. Words flashed on the screen do not have the advantage of non-verbal clues like facial expressions, gestures, tone of the voice to clarify, dilute or accentuate the message. So these words are likely to convey unintended meanings. Besides, we are not sure who these words could go to and the effect they would create. It is quite likely that they might return to haunt us. So we should take extra care while choosing our words. The following two simple guidelines can be helpful in this respect:

We should remember that we are dealing with not computer but real human beings. Before typing the words, we should ask ourselves: Shall I be able to say this to the persons face? If the answer is no, the message needs to be reworded or recast again and again till the answer is yes.

We should ask ourselves: How would I react if I were to receive this message? Our response would help us to frame the message appropriately. 2. Respect other peoples bandwidth People usually are hard pressed for time. They might also have concerns other than reading our e-mails. Long messages tend to irritate others and

make them impatient. So we should respect other peoples bandwidth and keep our message brief and precise.

The word bandwidth is usually applied to three things: Time (here, other peoples time) The information-carrying capacity of the wires and channels that connect everyone in cyberspace. The storage capacity of the host system. Howsoever large all the three might be, they are, after all, limited commodities. So we should be careful not to waste them. This consideration will make our messages brief and precise. 3. Send courtesy copies only to concerned people

Forwarding E-mails
If you are forwarding an e-mail, keep the following guidelines in mind: Write a brief note at the beginning of the forwarded message to explain why you are forwarding it. If there is an action you want the recipient to take, spell it our clearly. Make sure to change the subject line. Avoid forwarding messages that you find to be inappropriate.

E-mail Attachments
An e-mail attachment is a computer file which is sent along with an email message. The file is not a separate message; it is something additional sent as part of the message to which it is attached. Attachments may be sent in an encoded form, or un-encoded, that is, in their original form. If the file is encoded, the receivers software should be able to decode it. There used to be a limit on the size of the attachments that could be sent. But with advancement in technology, this size has been growing bigger. Now it is possible to support delivery of files of unlimited size. Viruses are often distributed as attachments to e-mail messages. Usually these viruses, whether in the attachment or in the e-mail message itself, are scanned for and dealt with by anti-virus software running on the host computer, mail client software and mail and internet service providers. So the risk of being corrupted by a virus has been substantially reduced. Still non-detection of a virus by any of these does not negate the presence of one. So if an e-mail message with attachments is not known to have come from a known and trusted source, it should be considered suspicious and dangerous and adequate steps should be taken to prevent corruption.