INFORMATION MESSAGE (E-MAIL) ASSIGNMENTInformation Message (E-mail)

*SPECIAL INSTRUCTIONS PLEASE READ CAREFULLY!* Apply what you have learned about business writing to your formal writing assignments. My expectations for all your writing assignments in this course are for them to be professional and polished before submitting them, which means proofread carefully, and spell and grammar checked.

Professional Writing Elements

Email does not contain long lead-ins, there is/are it is/was fillers, redundancies, empty words, trite business phrases, cliches, buried verbs, personal pronouns I, my, me, mine, you, your, yours, you're

Scenario:

Your boss, George Samson, is scheduled to meet with three potential clients for cases he will be taking on. Today he was called out of the office for an important law conference, and he will be gone most of the week. His appointments with clients were for Wednesday, April 10. Before he left he asked you to reschedule these appointments for one week later. He also wants a brief summary of each clients case. Somewhat flustered, you call each client and luckily reschedule all for the same day. Julie Barnes, fighting for SSI disability, agreed to a 9:30 a.m. appointment. Anthony Bigali, a restaurant owner, is being sued by a customer who claimed she slipped and fell in his establishment, said an 11:30 a.m. appointment will work for him. Zachary Rouse, a construction worker, was injured when he was broadsided by another driver and spent ten days in the hospital. He agreed to a 10:30 a.m. appointment. BUS 214 - Business Communication Instructor: Patti McMann 2 Sonia Poole, the firms primary paralegal is on vacation, and she always sits in on client first meetings. You are wondering if Mr. Samson would like Melanie Perkins, the other paralegal, to sit in the meetings in Sonias place. Your Task Following all assignment instructions write an e-mail to Mr. Samson including all the information he needs. Make your email easy to read and appealing.

Electronic mail, usually called e-mailElectronic mail., is quite familiar to most students and workers. It may be used like text, or synchronous chat, and it can be delivered to a cell phone. In business, it has largely replaced print hard copy letters for external (outside the company) correspondence, as well as taking the place of memos for internal (within the company) communication. E-mail can be very useful for messages that have slightly more content than a text message, but it is still best used for fairly brief messages.

Many businesses use automated e-mails to acknowledge communications from the public, or to remind associates that periodic reports or payments are due. You may also be assigned to populate a form e-mail in which standard paragraphs are used but you choose from a menu of sentences to make the wording suitable for a particular transaction.

E-mails may be informal in personal contexts, but business communication requires attention to detail, awareness that your e-mail reflects you and your company, and a professional tone so that it may be forwarded to any third party if needed. E-mail often serves to exchange information within organizations. Although e-mail may have an informal feel, remember that when used for business, it needs to convey professionalism and respect. Never write or send anything that you wouldnt want read in public or in front of your company president.

Tips for Effective Business E-mails

1. Proper salutations should demonstrate respect and avoid mix-ups in case a message is accidentally sent to the wrong recipient. For example, use a salutation like Dear Ms. X (external) or Hi Barry (internal).

2. Subject lines should be clear, brief, and specific. This helps the recipient understand the essence of the message. For example, Proposal attached or Your question of 10/25.

3. Close with a signature. Identify yourself by creating a signature block that automatically contains your name and business contact information.

4. Avoid abbreviations. An e-mail is not a text message, and the audience may not find your wit cause to ROTFLOL (roll on the floor laughing out loud).

5. Be brief. Omit unnecessary words.

6. Use a good format. Include line breaks between sentences or divide your message into brief paragraphs for ease of reading. A good e-mail should get to the point and conclude in three small paragraphs or less.

7. Reread, revise, and review. Catch and correct spelling and grammar mistakes before you press send. It will take more time and effort to undo the problems caused by a hasty, poorly written e-mail than to get it right the first time.

8. Reply promptly. Watch out for an emotional responsenever reply in angerbut make a habit of replying to all e-mails within twenty-four hours, even if only to say that you will provide the requested information in forty-eight or seventy-two hours.

9. Use Reply All sparingly. Do not send your reply to everyone who received the initial e-mail unless your message absolutely needs to be read by the entire group.

10. Avoid using all caps. Capital letters are used on the Internet to communicate emphatic emotion or yelling and are considered rude.

11. Test links. If you include a link, test it to make sure it is complete.

12. E-mail ahead of time if you are going to attach large files (audio and visual files are often quite large) to prevent exceeding the recipients mailbox limit or triggering the spam filter.

13. Give feedback or follow up. If you dont get a response in twenty-four hours, e-mail or call. Spam filters may have intercepted your message, so your recipient may never have received it.

Lets look at two examples of business e-mail. In Figure 9.1, we have an e-mail form. In Figure 9.2, we have a letter written specifically for the situation and audience.

Figure 9.1

Figure 9.2