LSS 1003 Life and Study Skills

Email Etiquette 2: Communicating Clearly

All communication has a purpose. This purpose needs to be clearly
communicated to the recipient of your message. Some typical purposes are:

Requesting
Informing
Thanking
Reminding
Apologizing
Confirming
Explaining
Offering

Most correspondence will include one or more of these.

Task 1: What kind of communication would you write in the
following cases?
1. You want lockers to be put in your classroom.
Requesting
2. You have just run an important workshop in DWC and a number of staff
helped you. Thanking
3. You want to spend a week of your holiday doing work experience at the
American Hospital. Informing
4. A doctor has just agreed by phone to meet you to be interviewed for your
research project. Confirming
5. Your teacher wants to know why you have not yet handed in your project.
Explaining
6. You need to miss your class next Tuesday as you have a driving test.
Apologizing
7. You want to invite a speaker from Dubai Health Authority to come and talk
about H1N1 in the UAE. Requesting
8. You have a good idea for a student campaign and youve been told to
arrange a meeting with Ms. Fatima to talk about it. Offering

LSS 1003 Life and Study Skills

What you need

If the message is unclear, impolite, takes too long to understand, or if your
English is incomprehensible, many people might ignore or delete your email.
You need:
1. Organization
Many messages can be organized as follows:
Paragraph

Part
Greeting
Reference

Typical phrase
Dear
With reference to your letter

Para 2

Purpose
Background

dated
I am writing to
As you may know, I am working

Para 3

Details
Say what you hope will

on
For this project, I need
I would be very grateful if

Para 4
Para 5

happen
Polite phrase
Closing line

Thank you for your help

I look forward to hearing from

Closing greeting

you
Yours

Para 1

2. Polite phrases
Politeness in communication is extremely important. The other person
cannot see your face, only your writing. If you are requesting, apologizing or
dealing with any sensitive issue, you are far more likely to get things done if
you approach the other politely. Many people will just ignore a rude,
disorganized or unprofessional message or request.
In Email Etiquette 1 we looked at
Greetings and Closings and Subject headings

LSS 1003 Life and Study Skills

Here are some other useful phrases:

Stating the reference:
With reference to + last correspondence
(eg. our phone call this morning / your email of 23 August / your letter dated
20th Feb 2015 / your advertisement in the Gulf News etc.)
I am writing about ...
I am writing to (inform / ask / etc.)
Further to (eg. your phone call this morning, our conversation last Monday,
your email of yesterday)

Purpose
I would like to ask / request / inform/ confirm etc.

Requesting
I would be grateful if you could
I would appreciate it if you could
Please could you..? (informal)

Thanking
I would like to thank you for
We were very pleased to ..
Thank you for .(informal)

Bad news / Apologising

Unfortunately,..
I would like to apologise for / about
3

LSS 1003 Life and Study Skills

I am very sorry that / about

I regret that..
Please accept my sincerest apologies.

Good news
I am delighted to inform you that
You will be pleased to hear that.

Enclosing / attaching
Please find enclosed / attached
I am attaching .for you to look at

Expressing urgency
Please.at your earliest convenience.
Please as soon as possible.
(Usually you need to give a reason and recognize that you are asking a
favour)

Final polite comment

Thank you in advance for your kind co-operation.
Thank you for considering my case.
Thank you once again for all your help.
I apologise once again for (my absence / the delay)

Closing
I look forward to hearing from you / meeting you

LSS 1003 Life and Study Skills

Task
Compose a polite email for three of the messages in Task 1. Make sure you
choose three different kinds of purpose for your emails. Include phrases from
the list above.