Wendy King

SLM 521

Email Tips for 4^th and 5^th Graders

Email is a great form of communication. You can write and send a message in a matter of minutes. Although this sounds like a piece of cake, there are many things to consider when communicating with people through email. The objective is to get a clear message to someone and receive a clear message back. Below are some tips to help you become an effective communicator using email:

Email Tips

· Know who you are sending an email to- if you are writing a message to your best friend about what to do over the weekend, you can get away with using more informal language. You may not double check your spelling and punctuation. If you are emailing a question to your teacher, you will need to be more careful and check spelling to avoid looking like a slacker.

· Write short subject lines- make sure your subject is directly related to your email message. If your subject is too general such as “Stuff” or “Important Information,” the reader may feel worried or unmotivated to read the email. Instead write subjects that hint about the message such as “Pizza Party” or “Math Homework Question.” This will better prepare your reader for the email and may help them give you a better response.

· When responding to an email, quote or reference that email- if you received an email about an invitation to a party and reply to the email with a simple yes or no answer, the recipient of the email may not know what you are saying yes or no to, especially if the email was written days ago. Instead, say “yes, I am coming to your party” or “no, I will not be able to come to your party on Saturday night.”

· Avoid using italics or bold text- the email that you write many look different once it is sent out. Italicized and bold texts may show up as other punctuation on a computer whose software cannot handle such formatting.

· Add http:// when referencing URL addresses- if you found a website that you want to share with someone, make sure you include http:// . Most URL’s require the http prefix. Also, do not put a period write after the URL. Put a space between the URL and the period to complete your sentence. URL addresses do not have periods in them and the recipient of your email may think that the period is a part of the URL when you intended it to be the conclusion of your sentence. Example: check out this site: http://www.ask.com .

· Keep paragraphs to a minimum of a few sentences- an email that is super long and contains multiple long paragraphs can be hard to read. When writing a lengthier message, make your paragraphs 2-3 sentences in length. Putting spaces between your paragraphs will also make your message easier to read.

· Do not overuse capital letters- in an email, the use of capital letters can be misinterpreted to indicate that you are raising your voice at someone. You may use them like you normally do in writing, making the first word in each sentence with a capital letter, but to avoid confusion or a sense of attitude, be careful not to use capitals. For example, I am your teacher and I send you a message like this “Your homework needs improvement.” This sounds pretty natural. However if my message looks like this: “YOUR HOMEWORK NEEDS IMPROVEMENT”, you may think that I am mad at you and that if we were in the same room, I would be yelling at you.

· Use gestures to reveal your feelings- it is often hard to express our feelings in an email since we are reading words and not hearing how they are spoken by a person. To show more emotion, you can use “emoticons,”special punctuation to show feelings. Here are some examples: :o) = happy, :o( = sad, ;o) =winking. These marks can help you put some feeling into your email.

· Keep your character in mind- if you are emailing someone for the first time, you will want to make a good first impression. If your first email to someone is poorly written with lots of misspellings and other errors, the recipient of the email may conclude that you are not very smart. Know who your audience is when you write emails!

· Watch your style- one great thing about email is we do not have to spend hours making sure our messages are written in perfect English or any other language. If you want people to respond to your email, be more informal. Use friendly and chatty language as you would when you talk to your friends at the lunch table. If you do not want many people to respond to your emails, use more fancy or formal language.

I hope these tips will help you as you use email to communicate. By keeping these tips in mind, you should be well on your way to becoming a pro at email and avoid sending confusing messages.