Correct spelling and grammar do not only help your emails look and sound professional. They also ensure that the message is clear and has little to zero chance of being misunderstood. Whether you're sending an email to a business prospect or a friend, proper grammar and word choice prevents confusion. It also means there's less time wasted on trying to decipher what your content means and more time on doing things that matter.
Can you improve your email writing skills even without formal training? It's easier than you think. All you need is basic communication skills, practice, and the right tools to help you write better and faster.
Improve Your Email Writing Skills in 5 Ways
Regardless of the type of email you are sending, the goal is always to deliver a clear message. An effective email is one that translates your thoughts as you want your reader to see and understand. Be it a memo, proposal, reminder, invitation, or what-not, what and how you write matters.
Here are some tips for improving your email writing skills. They might seem like no-brainers, but they are actually often overlooked.
1. Keep the message clear and brief.
The first thing you should ask yourself before writing is this: “What question is this email trying to answer?” That's where your email should focus. Because getting carried away with typing is so easy, we run the risk of over-communicating and oversharing. Before crafting your words, plan what you want to say and ask yourself along the way: "Is this necessary?"
Try to send the message using fewer words, assuming that your reader is a busy person with not much time to spare reading through thick blocks of text. In addition, email is not the most secure means of communication. If something sensitive needs to be elaborated on, it's best to do so over a phone call, video call, or in person.
2. Utilize subject lines. They're valuable real estate.
Subject lines are a godsend, especially to people who deal with dozens to hundreds of emails per day. A well-summarized subject header allows your reader to prioritize emails according to subject. Keep it short and direct. You, too, will appreciate this gesture if you're on the receiving end. Here are examples of good and bad subject lines.
3. Check your tone.
Communicating via email is different from speaking to a person face-to-face as there are nuances and body language signals to help understand a message. Your choice of words, punctuation marks, capitalizations, and sentence lengths can be misconstrued negatively. Here are examples of good and bad tone in an email.
4. Proofread your work or use a spell-check tool.
You might think that you've written a good email, but it still pays to go over the text once more to check for errors and any areas that might be unclear before sending it out. Another useful tactic to improve your email writing skills would be to utilize a spell-checker and readability app. You can use software like MS Word's pre-embedded tools, Chrome extensions, Grammarly, Hemingway, and similar apps.
5. Leverage your writing with predictive typing software.
If good writing skills don’t come naturally to you, there’s no reason to worry. There are predictive text software like Lightkey to help you craft well-written and structured emails that make you look like a writing and typing pro. Lightkey provides real-time text and punctuation predictions depending on your typing patterns and theme. Check out the image below as an example.
Lightkey’s AI-powered predictive text technology enables it to understand your writing habits, adapt to your themes, and provide meaningful predictions of up to 12 words into the future. Unlike other spell-check and grammar apps, Lightkey recommends words as you type, not just in retrospect, allowing you to continue writing freely without minimal pauses.
Even more, Lightkey is also a secure technology — never sending your content to the cloud — protecting your privacy and security. You can feel secure using Lightkey, knowing that the more you use the software, the better it understands your usage, giving more accurate recommendations in a privacy-conscious environment.
Write Clearer Emails Better and Faster With Lightkey
You can improve your email writing skills even without formal writing training by leveraging Lightkey’s text prediction technology to craft clear and effective emails. Beyond online correspondence, the software can handle any type of writing — and in a secure environment — be it for personal, professional, or corporate purposes.
Lightkey learns your unique writing style to gradually create a highly personalized typing experience spanning over 60 content domains, including legal, science, technology, finance, general interest, and more. The software natively supports Microsoft Office 2010-2019 and Office 365. It also works with Google Chrome and many other software, including email platforms such as Outlook Mail, Gmail, AOL Mail, and Yahoo Mail.
Explore Lightkey’s personalized text prediction features today.
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