Aim For a Professional, Conversational Tone

OK all you old-timers out there. Remember when we learned to write “professional” letters? How did they start?

Dear Sir or Madam:

To Whom it May Concern:

Gentlemen:

How would those look as the salutation in an email? As a rule, you don’t want to use those dry old greetings from business letters. “Hi” and “Hello” are generally fine. And as odd as it seems when you think about it, if you’re corresponding with someone you don’t know you might consider starting with “Dear:,” but even that sounds a little precious for a business email to my ears.

On the other hand, it’s important not to come across as sounding too casual or overly-familiar. A while back I was looking to fill a trainer position and some of the inquiries I got were just confusing. “Hey Corby,” one of them began, chatty as though it were from a friend. “I’ve been doing contract work for the last couple of years, and now I’m looking for a permanent position.” I had to look at the name on the resume a couple of times and search through the list of firms this trainer had worked for to make sure that he wasn’t someone I knew. He wasn’t, and the resume went in my trash can. If a trainer doesn’t know the appropriate tone to use when introducing himself to a potential employer, I didn’t want to take a chance on how he might present himself to a room full of lawyers.

Though finding the right tone for your emails is never going to be an exact science, my best recommendation is that a business email should generally be more formal that a phone call, but less formal than a letter. It’s a delicate balance that you need to consider-- if only for a split second-- each time you hit that New message button. You still want to include a friendly and appropriate greeting (more on that later), but you don’t want to err on the side being too stuffy, either. There’s no need to explain “This message is in reference to…” when you already have a working relationship with your correspondent. And there’s no excuse for using incorrect, overly formal language that usually seems intended to make the writer seem important.

I used to work with someone who always substituted the word “stated” when “said” would have worked perfectly well, as in “He stated that he was going to lunch early.” To me this seems appropriate only in court. The people who pull that are usually the same ones who replace “me” with the almost always incorrect “myself,” thinking that the more complex word is always better. It isn’t.