How to Start an Email: Use a Greeting

The greeting in the email is the first thing the other person hears in your voice.

So, whatever you say here is critical for setting the tone for the rest of the message.

No greeting? Rude. That’s like walking up to a person and just starting to talk at them without politely signaling in some way that you would like to have a conversation. In person, we can signal with language like “Hi” but we mostly signal that we want to talk to other people through non-verbal signals:

• Gestures — waving, walking towards a person, turning in your seat to face them
• Eye contact — making eye contact with the person and holding it is often a signal that we can start talking, even we are close enough to hear them
• Facial expressions — smiling, frowning, or otherwise changing our expression in response to the person’s language or behavior
• Proximity — getting close enough to the other person where saying something becomes appropriate

Your email should have a greeting.

Just “hi”? Impersonal. You wrote to the person, so you have at least one detail about them: their email address. You know their name, or at the very least their job title or organization. Using “hi” by itself lacks respect for the other person because it doesn’t acknowledge them. You are opening the conversation, so you are showing the most basic signs of politeness, but only the most basic signs.