This is an All Ears English podcast, episode 240 the four mistakes you are making with your emails in English.
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Lindsay McMahon, the English adventurer, and Michelle Kaplan, the New York radio girl, coming to you from Boston and New York City, USA.
Hey!
Do you ever wonder what kind of impression you're making when you write an email?
Well, today you'll find out the four mistakes that you're making when it comes to writing an email in the English language.
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Hey, Michelle, what's happening today?
Not too much.
Lindsay, how are you?
I'm doing really well.
I just had some dinner and it was great.
Oh, nice.
I haven't eaten dinner yet.
Oh, my God.
You got to get to.
I know.
I know.
I kind of my meal times are off, but it's OK.
Yeah, and after that, maybe you have to get back to your emails.
I know I do, because as we've learned in a past episode, I'm an information addict.
That's right.
Yeah, we were just talking about that.
Yeah, it's terrible.
So I'm always in my email inbox, and once in a while, I get emails from a student.
I get an email from a student, and something's not quite right sometimes.
Hmm.
Yeah, yeah, I know what you mean.
Yeah, and here at All Ears English, we are about connection, not perfection.
So it's not a problem if you guys are making mistakes in your emails.
But today, we want to let you know about four mistakes that you might be making with your emails.
Yes.
Excellent.
I think that this is really, really important, right?
Everybody is emailing today.
You can't get away from it.
And so, just as we want to work on being able to speak and being able to write and everything, we want to be able to write really good emails.
Absolutely.
And I think this is something that our listeners stress out about, not just from the business perspective, but also when they're sending just a social email to an acquaintance or a mentor.
I know that our listeners really stress about it because they wonder how their message comes off.
Yes, exactly.
So, yeah.
So why don't we go through?
These are, you know, four ways that you can help your writing of emails.
Yeah, exactly.
Or to start off, let's frame it this way.
Four mistakes you're making.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
No, that would be really, really helpful, right?
Yeah, so you guys can ask yourselves, are you doing this?
Are you making the mistake?
So Michelle, drum roll.
What is mistake number one?
Okay, mistake number one your greeting is inappropriate.
Oh, what does that mean?
Well, i mean, this really means, like you have to think about right.
Who are you writing to?
Who is this email for right?
So is it for a business colleague?
Is it for, you know, maybe your boss?
Is it for your friend?
You have to think about how you're going to open up your email, right?
Because sometimes just hi is appropriate, but sometimes you need something else.
What else do you think, Lindsay?
What kinds of greetings do you think are good?
Yeah, it's funny.
When I was thinking about these ideas to prepare for today's episode, I couldn't actually think of too many greetings.
But, you know, there is deer, although deer sounds to me, it sounds a little bit old fashioned.
What do you think, Michelle?
Yeah.
Yeah, I do think that it sounds old fashioned, although I also think that you know we're not quite away from using dear
And I think that this is really good, for maybe you're applying to a job and you want to use dear, or maybe you're you know?
I don't think you would use it for a boss, but I would say for someone.
I would say that deer is usually only for applying to a job or something like that.
What do you think?
I like that.
I like that.
I think that's a really good point.
Yeah.
We're not totally away from using deer, although it is endangered, I would say.
Yes.
That I agree on.
But yeah, I think that we want to make sure that we keep a special place in our heart for dear.
But don't, you know, I don't even think that I would email a boss using dear.
I don't think so.
I just don't think that it's necessary.
But applying for a job, I still think always dear.
Because dear to me implies some distance.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
Right.
Some formality, some distance, like you don't see the person every day necessarily.
So you're right, Michelle.
That's perfect.
It's good for when you're applying to a job.
Right.
Or if you're like, you know, writing your grandma an email, which could be good, too.
But I just think that let's save dear for applying for jobs.
OK, that works.
So just to run through them real quick if you're writing to a business colleague, what are the three ways that you could start the email then?
Or, yeah, just to a business colleague, what are the two ways you could start the email?
You could start.
OK well, if I'm going to write to a business colleague, I'd probably just write hi and then their name.
So like, hi, hi, John or whatever.
Or if I feel like a little bit closer to them, you know, maybe I'll just write their name, John.
That's all.
Yeah, perfect.
I like that.
And if we're writing to a friend or someone a little bit closer to us, maybe an acquaintance someone, even someone we just met, but an acquaintance what would we say?
In that situation, I think we'd probably say either, you know, hey or hi, and then their name.
So, hey, Susie.
Hi, Susie.
Honestly, I also think that sometimes to my friends, I don't even write hi.
I just write like, what's up?
How's it going?
You know, I may not even if I'm really close to them, I may just kind of not even say anything.
Yeah, absolutely.
Absolutely.
Especially if you're I think that's really common if you're in a string of emails back and forth.
Email string.
Yeah, definitely.
Right.
Because in that in that situation, it's kind of almost like a text message.
Right.
You don't say in your text messages, you don't start off a conversation, usually with a friend, by saying like hello, how are you?
Right.
It's you would.
Normally you save that you know for maybe someone you never talk to, or something like that.
But a string of email, you don't need to like say hi or hey every time.
Absolutely.
And so the one mistake that we want to warn you guys against is one thing I can imagine could be a big disaster would be using hey for the business colleague right.
Because that's too casual, right?
It may be too casual.
You have to see how close you are to that colleague.
Right, right.
Right.
But hey to your boss, maybe not a good idea.
Yeah, probably not.
Unless you have a boss that's like super, super relaxed.
I mean, I could see that.
I've had that experience before, having just like a relaxed, you know, like a boss that I'm almost, like a little bit friends with.
Yeah, that's a good point.
That's a good point, actually.
So it can be used, but I think better safe than sorry, right?
Right.
Yeah, better saved than sorry, especially in the beginning.
Let's move to number two.
Mistake number two.
What is it?
Mistake number two.
You get to the point too quickly.
Oh, no.
In American culture, we need small talk.
Oh, yeah.
Right.
Oh, yeah.
We like to beat around the bush.
Yeah, exactly.
But first one trick that we can offer you guys here is one thing that I personally like to do is I just like to start almost every email with a thank you.
Thank you for your email or thank If the person has taken you out for lunch the day before.
Thank you for lunch yesterday.
You know, it's really a nice way to start off the email.
Right.
Or maybe you're like... One big email is the follow-up email.
Follow-up after like a job interview or something like that.
And that's usually... I would say people write maybe like...
Thank you so much for taking the time to meet with me or something like that.
Right.
But I come.
Yeah, I really I agree with the thank you, especially for you know, more formal kind of relationship.
Of course, if you aren't thanking some, if you you know, we can only thank someone for their email if they've emailed us before.
Of course.
Right.
So.
So what if they haven't emailed us before?
I mean, what else can we say in terms of small talk to get that email started?
Yeah, you might say something like, I hope your day is going well.
I hope you had a nice weekend.
Things like this, just some sort of you know cheerful, you know way to introduce yourself almost, or just you know that you care right.
Because if you write to somebody and you say, hello, so-and-so, or dear so-and-so, um, I need to know blah, blah, blah.
Like it just sounds very harsh.
And America, we're just not that direct.
Absolutely.
Totally agree.
Totally agree.
And one other that we can say is, you know, how's your new project coming along?
Right.
So that's another example of what you can say.
And this is not, you're not expecting a huge answer for this, right, guys?
You're not expecting like a paragraph long about the person's weekend.
But you really, as Michelle said, you really just need to address the person as a person, not just a business person, kind of colleague or you know.
You just need to go straight to how is that person doing?
Right exactly, i think that that's important, right?
We don't want to just seem like robots all the time.
Exactly exactly okay, and you know, we're people, we're people in the end, totally okay.
Are you 100 confident that your emails are giving the right impression when you write them in English?
If you're not, then I can help.
I've prepared a free video training for you at allearsenglish.com email.
You're going to get a video explaining the mistakes that you're making with your emails in English right now, plus a free PDF guide to go along with it.
So come on over to allearsenglish.com slash email and I'll see you there.
Let's jump to the next one, Michelle.
So mistake number three, what is it?
You don't organize your emails or your ideas.
Oh, okay.
So this is basically, you know...
You don't want to go on and on and on.
You want to add something about, like we talked about in number two, about oh, I hope you're doing well.
Blah blah, blah.
But if you keep on going on and on with lots of little details, you...
People are going to get annoyed.
Email is not supposed to be for long letters, you know, unless they're to like a boyfriend or girlfriend and you're having some issues, right.
In that case, it's a love letter.
But this is we're not talking about love letters today, guys.
We're talking about email.
Exactly.
And in the United States.
So, you know, we talk a lot about American culture here.
We I can't speak with any authority about other cultures necessarily.
But I can tell you that in American culture time is a commodity and it's rude if you waste someone's time.
And email, as we already know, is the biggest time waste of all.
So guys, just make it short and sweet and easy.
Yeah, I like that.
Short and sweet, definitely, right?
I don't think that... Yeah, I mean, I...
I'm guilty of this.
I'll sometimes have a hard time getting to the point in an email where I think, oh my gosh, I have to mention this.
I don't want to forget this.
I've actually had to go through emails and delete them because I know that people get angry.
I don't want to make anybody think...
Oh, gosh, Michelle.
An email from her.
I don't want to get that reputation.
So I have actually gone back through and deleted things.
And if you have to do that, then that's great.
But you definitely should make sure you give your email a read through before you send it.
Think.
Is it necessary?
This sentence or all of these words necessary?
Can I say this in an easier way?
Right, exactly.
And I know we've had, for example, a few weeks ago, we had Jay Bethke on the show.
And he is a writer.
He's our blog writer here.
And he told us that good writing in American culture... is short and concise and to the point.
So we know that often in Western European countries, good writing is long and flowery.
It's a word we used with Jay.
But guys, even though in this episode we're not talking about writing papers, but we're talking about writing in some form, And actually maybe this is more important than writing papers, because this is your life is email right?
Unfortunately.
So guys, one thing you can do to prevent things from getting long and indirect is use the active voice.
Yes.
Yes.
Active is really good.
What's the active voice?
Well, active voice is, you know, hi, how are you?
I need this.
You don't want to kind of push the subject around to the other side.
You don't want to leave things out.
You just want it to be very direct. focused, don't misplace any information, things like that.
Yeah, exactly.
So I need the paper by 5 p.m. instead of saying the paper is needed by 5 p.m., right?
That's so indirect.
When I read that, I kind of roll my eyes.
Yeah, it seems like a little rude.
You know, just tell me what you want.
Don't like the paper is needed by 5 p.m.
Right.
Like, I don't know.
It just it sounds awkward and it sounds like a little snobby.
Yeah, exactly.
And maybe the person is trying to be polite, but it doesn't work.
So use the active voice.
Let's roll into the next one and the last mistake.
Mistake number four, Michelle, what is it?
It is you don't tell people what they should do.
Oh, and this really connects with the previous one.
Right, exactly.
With the idea of the active voice versus the passive.
So at the very end of the email, what exactly should the reader do?
What are some examples of how to phrase this, Michelle?
Right.
So we have like a let's touch base on this next week.
Or please let me know by Monday if you're able to attend the meeting, or please please, give me a call or follow up with me.
Something like this.
Right.
You need to know what is the next step.
Why?
Otherwise, it's like, well, what was that?
You know?
Right.
What am I supposed to do?
It's like a call to action, a call to action.
I want to go back to a phrase real quick before we wrap up today.
Let's touch base.
What does that mean?
That is such a strange idiom.
Yeah, I think it's really common, though.
So I'm glad that we're talking about it.
A touch base means like, let's talk.
Let's, you know, let's catch up.
What did we what did we resolve?
Did we resolve anything?
Anything new?
Right.
Let's connect again.
Ah, that's a better way to put it.
Yeah, no, you're right, though.
You're right.
What you've said is great.
It's perfect.
Let's connect again.
Let's catch up with each other, you know, next week.
And it's funny because it comes from baseball, right?
It must.
Right.
That's true.
It's a baseball idiom.
We have so many baseball idioms in our culture and we'll have to do another episode on that one, Michelle.
That's so funny, because I was actually just going to do something with that and with my class today and then I ended up not getting to it.
But yeah, it's true.
No, I think that's a great topic.
That'd be a really interesting show.
You should definitely try it.
Well, this has been great.
So just to recap the four mistakes, I'm just going to read them out really quickly, and then we'll finish up for today.
So mistake number one, your greeting is inappropriate.
Michelle, what's mistake number two?
You get to the point too quickly.
Mistake number three, you don't organize your emails or your ideas.
And mistake number four, you don't tell people what they should do.
Oh, and there you have it, guys.
So stop making these mistakes and you'll be writing some awesome emails.
Good luck.
Yes, definitely.
Good luck with it.
Thanks, Michelle.
Thank you, Lindsay.
Bye.
Bye.
And hey, if you liked today's show, please let us know with a review in itunes.
Thanks so much for listening and see you next time.
