Headlines
With technology being so important in the business world today emails are the primary means of communication, be it with a client or between coworkers. Headlines let the person know what the email is about before they open it and can convey how important or unimportant the actual email will be if done properly. A few tips will help make sure you have perfect headlines for all of your emails.
- Headlines need to be properly capitalized, all caps and no caps are not the correct way to write a headline.
Wrong ex: Subject: READ RIGHT AWAY!
This tells the person reading the subject line nothing at all about what the email is about, also many spam emails have similar headlines and might not even react a person's inbox and go straight to spam. All lower case letters is also incorrect. The proper way to do it is that all words be capitalized unless they are prepositions with 3 letters or less.
Correct ex: News on the Latest Nike Campaign Proposal
That is a good headline because it tells the reader exactly what to except from the email, news about the Nike campaign that is being worked on in the office. Headlines are so important because they make sure the reader so not over look an important email and it also lets them know if an email can be put aside to be read later.
Formality
When writing documents for the work place it is important make sure that you are formal enough for the type of document you are writing, for instance an interdepartmental message does not have to be as formal as something that you may be sending a client. The easiest fix for formality in professional writing is whenever you are not sure whether or not you need to be formal, just assume that you should be formal because it is better to be too formal than not formal enough.
Following these simple tips should start you on you're way to better and more effective professional writing.
I couldn't agree more with you that we all rely on spell check way too much. I also learned that a three letter words are not capitalized in a headline. Overall I think you did a good job explaining a couple of common mistakes we all deal with in our writings.
ReplyDeleteI think that you did a great job on discussing formality. I agree that it is better to be too formal than to be not formal enough. It is really important to think about the person that is going to read your message and than determine relationship with this person and level of formality. However, I don’t agree on some points that you made when discussing headlines in emails. Sometimes you may use all caps in your subject line of the message if is very important and urgent. It is also important to limit the length of your headline in emails because in most e-mails we see only first few word of the subject. I think that your correct example is a little bit to long. Other than that, I think you did a very good job on your first blog post.
ReplyDeleteTerri,
ReplyDeleteGreat job completing the first blog assignment. I think the fact that you provided a do and don't do example was an effective way to illustrate the point you were making. One thing I did notice was that the title of your blog was misleading. You focused on only two aspects, headlines and formality, and both seemed geared toward email writing. I think including more types of common professional writing mistakes and detail would have made this blog more helpful to readers. I also would not use such things as Pro, but actually spell out the word in order to ensure your goal of the blog is clear. Some other key things to consider and keep in mind for future blog posts is, to read and re-read it before hitting submit because I noticed little common errors such as the flow of the sentence, wrong word use (you typed the word "so not", but meant to say "does not", and general punctuation errors, and clarity in what your trying to say (what I'm referring to is the last sentence in the wrong example...you said all words be capitalized, but meant the first letter of each word). These are just some things to think about, otherwise great job.
I was hoping for more focus on this post as the information was so general, you ended up saying very little. Graphic or embedded video is required on each post, too. Last sentence before Headline category is not grammatical.
ReplyDelete