5 Keys to Formatting Excellent Business Emails

You have to write an email in a formal or professional context, and you want it to look right. You care about this because you know that how the message looks will affect whether the other person opens your email, reads it, and responds to it. For any of that to happen, the person needs to trust you.

And as we’ve learned from dressing up for job interviews, how things look affects whether we trust them.

Here are the 5 main things you need to know to correctly format a business email, professional email, or formal email:

1. Subject Line: Emails have a subject line. This part should tell the reader something about the message they are going to open. Subject lines should be short, easy to read, and actionable if that’s relevant or possible. Consider the acronym ACT: Action Content Time. What do you want the reader to do? About what? By when?
2. Greeting: You must say hello to your audience. The best way to do that is by using a greeting word or phrase *and* their name or a name for the group. The greeting words are usually Dear, Good morning/Good afternoon, Hi/Hello. “Hey” is not recommended for business professional emails. Unfortunately, the punctuation is tricky for each of the greetings.
3. Paragraphing: Paragraphs in business professional emails should be short. They…