How to write a professional email: transition from "I am L33t" for "Business elite."

When you write an email, you really don’t want to sound like an idiot. You’re not expected to write like you got your English degree from Yale to make people think you’re smart, but you sure don’t want to write like you got your GED while incarcerated in Green Haven. Generally, in a business, people don’t mind minor grammatical mistakes like changing the tense, comma mistakes, or disagreeing pronouns, but they expect some degree of professionalism or they won’t take it seriously. It doesn’t take a genius to write a good letter; emails shouldn’t be any different.

One of the worst practices is not capitalizing “i” and abbreviating inappropriately.

Nothing infuriates me more than when I see a sentence like “What about 2?” or “I have your face.” This kind of short hand can come in handy when giving instructions to your Battlefield 1942 team, in the middle of an intense World of Warcraft raid, or trying to type while eating a sandwich, but it has no place in professional email. Is it so difficult to press the Shift key? If you don’t take the time to compose emails carefully, I can only assume you have nothing useful to say. It’s no longer like you’re paying for bandwidth, don’t be stingy with lyrics.

I can understand why people use this kind of language on cell phones. At ten cents each, texting is outrageously expensive. Making the most of that character limit can save you a great deal of money, at the expense of your dignity. However, emails do not suffer from the same restrictions.

The rule here is that when writing professional email, never use shorthand. Unless you are on the court reporter’s society mailing list, the recipient will thank you for your integrity. Also, always capitalize the letter “i” when referring to yourself.

If your email appears to be from a high school student, it goes in the trash along with the attached resume. His managerial experience from Burger King and his Ph.D. from the University of Phoenix Online won’t mean a squat if I can’t read his email. If you can’t take the time to write a professional email, you can’t expect anyone to read it.