If you're reading this, there's a good chance that you have an email account. You may well have several — perhaps separate accounts for professional and personal contacts.
如果你正在阅读这篇文章,你肯定有一个或若干个甚至是不同帐号的私人或办公邮箱。
It's easy to assume that we know how to use email effectively: it's been around for long enough. But if you find yourself struggling to communicate effectively by email, these six tips should help:
Some people jump straight into the text of an email without so much as a "hi". It's polite to add a salutation, just as you would with a letter. That might look like:
Your salutation needs to be appropriate. If you're writing to a prospective employer, "Dear Mr. Johnson" is probably the best way to go. "Hi Bob" is going to look unprofessional.
But don't assume that formalityis always the right answer. If you're writing to a friend of a friend, using "Dear" plus their surname is going to seem oddly stilted.
If in doubt, "Dear [first name]" will usually work just fine.
当你判断不出哪种场合该用什么称呼合适,你可以使用“亲爱的+名”来应付所有情况。
2. Get Straight to the Point
直奔主题
Your correspondent won't want to wade through paragraphs of waffle — so get straight to the point. If you're writing to someone out of the blue, don't give them your life story before you make a request.
Getting straight to the point might mean that the first line of your email (after the salutation) looks something like this:
直奔主题意味着邮件内容的第一行应该是这样:
I'm working on an article about Acme Widgets for XYZ publication, and wondered if you had a few minutes to answer the following three questions.
我现在正在写一篇要交给某某出版社关于极致控件的文章,不知道您有没有时间回答3个问题呢?
Could you supply me with a quotefor the following project?
可否对下面的设计项目进行引证?
I'd like to discuss the revisions with you. Would Tuesday at 2pm be a good time?
我想和你谈谈修订的事。这周二下午两点您有空吗?
I've attached the documents you requested at our meeting yesterday.
昨天会议上您要求的文件已附上,请查收。
You may well need to include more details, but if you put the important point up front, your email is more likely to get a timelyresponse. If your question comes too far down, the recipient may not even realise that you need a reply.
Try to keep your email as short as possible. Make the paragraphs short, too — long paragraphs can be difficult to read and take in.
尽可能将你的邮件内容写得简单明了。文章太长不易阅读和吸收。
Do make sure you give enough information for your correspondent to be able to make a decision, if that's required. You might find that it's best to offer this as an attachment— you'll have more flexibility over formatting, and your correspondent can print out the attachment easily.
If you've got several questions or points to make, it's very helpful to number them. This makes it easy for the other person to respond to each one, especially if some just require a yes/no response or a single word answer. For instance:
A typo or spelling mistake can turn one word into an entirely different one. If you're using email in a professionalcapacity, that mistake could be embarrassing — or even offensive. It might alter the whole meaning of your email: a missing "not", for instance, could potentially cause problems.
Spell-check should help you avoid any silly mistakes — but use your eyes and brain too. There are plenty of words that spell-check won't pick up. If you're emailing from a device with predictive text and an auto-correct feature, make sure you always re-read what you've typed.
Do you have an email signature? (That's the text that appears automatically at the bottom of your email.) Some people don't use one at all; others have a funny quote or favorite saying.
Putting in a line to promote your recent book / blog / product
宣传你最新的书籍,博文或产品
If your email provider allows it, you may even want to create several signatures to use for different purposes (e.g. one for emailing friends, one for new business contacts).