In this course, you will master the “dos and don'ts” of communicating by email.

The topics in this course include:

  1. Email length
  2. Response time
  3. Subject lines
  4. Formality (“Greetings” fall under this item)
  5. Tone
  6. Acronyms and abbreviations
  7. “I hope all is well.”
  8. Emailing outside of standard business hours
  9. Using “you” instead of “I”
  10. Signing off with your name (in addition to your email signature)
  11. Copying – Reply or Reply All?
  12. Including a new person in an existing chain of emails
  13. Out-of-office messages
  14. Drafting with an empty “To field”
  15. Attachments
  16. High importance / Marking urgent
  17. Remembering to respond to each question
  18. Knowing when to use the telephone or meet face-to-face
  19. 12:00 p.m. vs. 12:00 pm
  20. Oxford commas (a.k.a. serial commas)
  21. One space vs. two spaces after a sentence
  22. Which is proper: email or e-mail?
  23. Misspelling of names --- capital letters, accents, commas, hyphens, etc.
  24. Dale, Leslie, Pat, Sam, Alex, Taylor, Riley
  25. Can you refer to "Stephen" as "Steve"? "Beverly" as "Bev"?
  26. Proofreading
  27. ALL CAPS IS PERCEIVED AS SHOUTING!!!
  28. Following up
  29. Moving from a conversation to a calendar event
  30. Autocomplete

Learning Objectives:
By the end of this webinar, you will be able to:

  • Follow the etiquette of email communication
  • Adopt a writing style for emails that is friendly, yet professional
  • Conceptualize how your readers want your messages to look
  • Increase the percentage of your emails that receive a reply

Instructor

Ryan Standil

Ryan Standil leads CPD programs about effective written communication. The goal of the programs is to teach participants how to view their own writing from the perspective of their readers. Before he became a writing instructor, Ryan worked at a law firm in Toronto. Ryan attended Western University, in London, Ontario, where he graduated from the HBA program at the Ivey Business School and the JD program at the Faculty of Law. Today, Ryan delivers presentations at CPA Ontario, the Law Society of Ontario, and individual firms.