Writing business emails in English | Cambridge English

Natilly Macartney is back with her latest article on teaching business English. Last time, she explored conducting a class debate. Here, Natilly looks at getting your students to master the skill of writing effective emails.

With more students now being what is termed ‘digital natives’, a task such as writing an email may seem like second nature; however, there is an art to writing effective emails. For business English students, mastering the skill of writing emails and having a good knowledge of ‘email etiquette’ is crucial if they are to go on and communicate successfully in the English-speaking workplace.

Subject line and salutation

To begin the lesson on writing emails, I presented students with an email and asked them to identify the purpose of each section. As expected, there were many blank faces! So what actually is the underlying structure of an email?

Firstly, every email needs a subject line, which summarises briefly and clearly the content of the message; typical key words to use in a subject line are ‘request’, ‘update’, ‘notification’ etc. An effective activity here was giving students a worksheet to complete in which they had to give short emails subject lines, and then discussing the answers as a class.

Next in an email is the salutation, which is the greeting that addresses the recipient. When discussing salutations, it is also a good opportunity to highlight to students the differences between formal and informal writing. In business, if you are emailing a colleague who you are in regular contact with, then it is common practice to use the construction dear + first name; however, for addressing people who are higher up in an organisation, or from outside of an organisation, then it is expected that second names or job titles are used. Of course, this can vary depending on the type of organisation, some companies purposefully adopt an informal style of communication, regardless of the recipient. I stressed to students to carefully consider how they greet their recipient, but ultimately, they should ‘mirror’ how a contact addresses them.

A majority of my students speak German as a first language, and one BIG difference between written English and written German is the use of punctuation, especially commas. When writing formal emails, it is custom to use a comma after the salutation and sign off, however, for informal emails, it is acceptable to leave punctuation open, meaning no commas after the salutation and sign off. Whichever style students opt to use, the most important thing is that it is kept consistent.

Opening and closing sentences

Following the salutation is the opening sentence, which should state the topic and purpose of the email. Typical formulations students can use for opening sentences are:

“Thank you for your e-mail” and “I am/we are writing to you because…”

All emails should be structured into short paragraphs that present the key information. The purpose of an email is that the recipient can read it easily, understand it and take appropriate action quickly (of course this is subject to who is receiving your email).

The final part of the main body is the closing sentence, which should outline any future actions or steps to be taken by the recipient. Some useful phrases for students to learn here are, “Could you please…?” and “We/I would appreciate if you could…”

Just as a salutation reflects the formality of an email, so does the overall sentence structures and words used. I gave the students hand outs listing formal and informal phrases to use in an email, and the students compared a formal and informal email, as well as rewriting an email more formally. This activity required the students to replace the pronoun ‘I’ with ‘we’, and rewrite sentences using the imperative, for example, “do it immediately” becomes “please can you do this as soon as possible?”

Common mistakes in business emails

Using the hand outs, students learnt formal phrases they could use in an email for homework, and then as a final in-class assessment wrote a formal email. Typical mistakes students made involved grammar, not structuring emails into short paragraphs and using double sign offs, for example, ‘your sincerely and yours faithfully’. An important difference to highlight to students is that you only use yours faithfully when you do not know the contact’s name, for example if you began an email with “Dear Sir or Madam”.

Writing emails is a skill that is only going to develop with practice, and lots of it. Next semester, I want to give my business students as many opportunities as possible to practise writing ‘real’ emails. I think I will schedule this class earlier on in the semester and encourage students to send me regular emails, for example, emails to request feedback on work, ask to attend office hours etc.

Make sure to catch up with Natilly’s previous articles on conducting a class debate, creating a business plan, and writing an effective English CV.