Composing Risk-Free E-Mails

ne of the easiest and most effective ways for employers to reduce electronic risk is simply to require that employees use appropriate, businesslike language in all electronic communications, says Nancy Flynn, author of The ePolicy Handbook (AMACOM, 2001).

    Here are some of the guidelines she recommends in composing a business e-mail:

• Use a conversational tone. Flynn says to imagine you are attending a dinner party with colleagues, supervisors, and customers. Use the same language and tone in an e-mail that you would use at that kind of event.

• Don’t be overly rigid with grammar use. In business the rules have changed. Feel free to use contractions, to end sentences with prepositions, and to use pronouns like I, we, and you. If grammar is too stiff, readers won’t know what the message is about.

• No sexist language. This isn’t just harassing or discriminatory jokes and comments, but also the overuse of masculine pronouns. Given the increasing number of women in the workforce, it’s important for electronic writers to avoid language that could rankle clients or colleagues.

• Don’t incorporate jokes into electronic business writing. Because e-mail is impersonal and lacks inflection or body language, your joke is likely to fall flat or to be misconstrued.

• Limit the use of abbreviations and use only legitimate and recognizable ones, not your own personal shorthand. An excess of abbreviations can be annoying and confusing for the reader.

• Don’t try to warm up business writing with "smileys" -- also known as emoticons -- using keyboard characters to represent smiles and similar facial expressions. Smileys are the equivalent of e-mail slang and have no place in business communications.

• If you have trouble getting employees to adhere to a business writing standard, you can always apply a technological solution to the problem, Flynn says, by installing software programmed to detect and report the use of "trigger" words in e-mails sent by employees. That software can usually be programmed to track competitors’ names as well, alerting management to communication that is taking place between employees and the company’s competition.

Workforce, February 2002, p. 40 -- Subscribe Now!