PROOFREAD YOUR EMAILS
How many emails do you write and send each day? One? Five? Two hundred?
How many of those do you read before sending to check for informational errors, grammatical problems, or just bad spelling? What about double-checking the To:, CC:, and BCC: fields? Have you ever sent an email to the wrong person or accidentally hit “Reply All”? If you said no, you’re lying.
Proofreading your emails before clicking “send” is a simple habit in itself but can be difficult to incorporate into our workflow. As we feel more and more stressed for time, emails become more like instant messenger than letters. Once you’re done writing the text, take a breath, read the email from start to finish, and fix issues along the way.
Bonus tip: Type the person’s email address in the “To” field only after you’re happy with the message to avoid sending early.
I also recommend reading your emails out loud to make sure you sound like a human being. It lets you know when you’re rambling or when certain phrases don’t sound quite right and could confuse your reader. If all you can do is whisper to yourself, that’s fine, but give the words some life by speaking them aloud to hear what works and what doesn’t. If you’re concerned about privacy such as people listening in to what you’re saying, just move your lips. You’re just trying to confirm that you could say those words without sounding awkward.
This habit is doubly important if you send emails from your iPhone or iPad as the website DamnYouAutoCorrect.com illustrates beautifully. It’s just too easy to send your boss an inappropriate solicitation because you let “I want to thank you guys” be autocorrected to “I want to spank your ass.”
For those of you who feel grammatically challenged, I recommend two incredible and free web-based tools: HemingwayApp.com and Grammarly if you’re in the mood to take your email writing game to the next level. These are the tools I use to spot-check my own articles before publishing (along with reading them out loud).
It takes a shockingly small amount of time with each email to ensure it says what you intended it to say. The longer the email, the more important this is. Take a minute or two now to save a shitload of time if there’s a problem.
Article originally posted at goodfuckinghabits.com/proofread
