Hi. I'm Rebecca from engVid. In the next few
minutes, you'll learn how to write a formal
email and what principles you can follow of what you should do and what you should not
do. Okay? So, when do you need to write a
formal email? Because today we do write lots
of emails, there's no question about it, and
definitely all of them should not be formal.
Once we have a relationship with someone at
work or outside of work, we don't write formal
emails. Right? But sometimes you do need to
write a formal email. For example, if you're
applying for a job, or if you're trying to get a new client, or if you're writing to
a university. Right? Then you do need to be more formal. And in general, we need to be
more formal whenever we're writing to someone
that we don't know already. Okay? So that's
kind of the way that you can decide if I should
write a formal email or an informal email.
Okay? So now, what I'm going to do is I'm going to present the 12 principles that you
can follow, the 12 kind of rules, and then I'll
also show you how to apply those principles
by working and checking an actual email which
has some of these mistakes, and then we'll
go through it together, and you can help me to find and correct the mistakes. Okay? So,
All right, so the first thing, and some of
these... Okay, before I start, some of these
might seem really obvious, and you're going to
say, "Rebecca, I know that." But some people
don't. I'm sure you do, but some other people
don't somewhere. So, if you know it, great.
If you don't, then just make sure you remember
it from now on. Okay. So, the first thing
is emoticons. What are emoticons? Okay, so emoticons, first of all, are these kind of
little cute symbols, smiley faces, and things
like that that we use a lot today. All right?
In texting and so on, but we should not use
them in formal emails. Okay? So, no emoticons.
Next, texting kind of short forms and texting
language, such as "How are you?" written as
an "r" and a "u", or "why", the word "why" written just as a "y", or "I see", as in "I
understand", just written as the letters
"ic". Now, this is perfectly okay when you're
texting your friends or even other people that you know well, but it is certainly not
okay to use in a formal email. It doesn't make you look good. You always want to use
your best English when you're approaching someone for the first time. Okay?
Next, slang. No slang and no jokes. Why? Well,
slang is just not proper with... In a formal
situation, so you want to stay away from that,
and you want to avoid jokes because humor
is a very culturally sensitive issue, and what you consider funny might not be what
somebody else considers funny, so it's best to
avoid the jokes. And by slang, I mean things
like saying "I screwed up" or instead of saying
"I made a mistake" or saying "I was zonked"
when you want to say "I was exhausted". Okay?
Try to find the equivalent, proper English
word for whatever it is you're trying to express. Okay?
Next, try to avoid idioms in a formal email.
Now, you'll see that on our website, we have
a lot of lessons about idioms and even business
idioms, and it's perfectly okay and good for
you to learn them and even try to start using
them when you're talking to your colleagues
at work or other people at work. Again, people
and situations with which you're familiar.
Okay? But if you're reaching out for the first
time to someone, idioms are not considered
formal ways of expressing yourself. For example,
if you want to say that something was extremely
easy, use those words. Don't say "It was a piece of cake", which is an idiom. Okay?
If you want to say "This was the strategy that I followed", say that. Don't say "That
was the game plan." Okay? So, avoid idioms in formal emails.
Next, contractions. Now, this is a little bit
tricky because sometimes we can use contractions,
but overall, if you're trying to be really formal, then avoid contractions when it's
a subject or a verb. So, instead of "I'll", "I will contact you tomorrow", say "I will
contact you tomorrow". Instead of "we'll", say "we will". Okay? Instead of "don't",
say "do not". Instead of "can't", say "cannot",
and so on. Okay? So, avoid the contractions.
Don't make it sound unnaturally formal, but keep it formal. Okay?
All right. Next, avoid abbreviations. All right? What do I mean by abbreviations? For
example, even in business correspondence, we often say "ASAP". Now, "ASAP" means "as
soon as possible". Okay? But you don't want to use that the first time you're reaching
out to someone, or you don't want to use that
in a formal email. Write out all the words.
"As soon as possible". Also, in case you're communicating in English with people from
around the world, they might not know those
kind of short forms and abbreviations. Okay?
And you don't want to make it that they feel
bad or they just simply don't understand what
you've written. Okay? So, don't say "ASAP", say "as soon as possible".
And even things like "info" instead of "information".
All right? Again, when you know somebody well,
you can use those short forms; when you don't,
avoid them. All right? Okay. So, that... Those
were some basic first... The first six are
pretty basic. Now we come to some little more
serious principles that you should follow. And in fact, these are so serious that we
have lessons on engVid on each and every one
of these lessons, these principles. Okay?
So, if you're not sure when I explain them
or you want more ideas of how to do it well,
then I'll also show you where you can watch lessons on these.
So, number seven, subject lines. What's the subject line? When we send an email at the
top-right, what do we see? Whatever somebody
writes is the main subject. What is that email
about? Now, unfortunately, I do still receive
a lot of emails where people are just not
writing anything in the subject line. So,
sometimes there's nothing written, or sometimes
they just write "re", which means "regarding";
it's short for "regarding", but then they
don't write anything after that. Or they write
"ref", which means "referring to" or "referenced
to", but again, sometimes they write nothing
after that. And that's all really bad because
today people are getting so many emails, so if you want anyone to open your email, you
really need to write a strong subject line. And there are some very good ways in which
you can do that, which I show you in my other
lesson. Even if you write a word, like "meeting",
okay? Suppose you're writing to somebody about
the meeting. Is that a good subject line?
No, that's a bad subject line because what are
you saying about the meeting? Which meeting?
When? What? So, are you saying... Requesting
a meeting? Canceling a meeting? Postponing
a meeting? Rescheduling a meeting? Those are
the words you need to write, okay? And again,
if you want to learn how to write those, I'll
show you where you can watch a lesson on that.
Okay, next, "salutations". So, "salutations"
are how we begin and end the letter. Like
in an informal email, you just say "hi" or "hey" or "hey, John" or "hi, Mary" or even
"hello", okay? And you might end an informal
email by just saying "take care", okay, or
"bye" or something like that, or "see you
later", but in a formal email, obviously you
don't want to do that. So again, we have a
lesson on that, I have a lesson on that, where
you can learn what's the proper formal way to
begin, and that's usually with "dear" something.
If you don't know the person's last name... First
name, or if you... Sorry. Even if you know the
person's first name, you should use the person's
last name. Always start more formally with all
of this, okay? The thing to keep in mind, the
point to keep in mind is to start more formally,
and then as you start to correspond with someone
and they become more informal, then you can also
adjust your letter-writing style accordingly.
Okay? So here, you could start with, like, "Dear
Mr. Johnson", okay? And you could end with "Yours
sincerely", okay? Something like that. Again,
there is a system of how to start and how to end based on how formal it is,
and you need to know that system so that you can use it in the right time.
Now, intensifiers. Okay? I have recently released
a lesson on this, and a lot of people really like
that lesson because they were using this word
"really" a lot. For example, "really" is an
intensifier. What does it mean? If I want to say
that I was very interested, I could say I was
really interested, but you don't want to keep
using "really" all the time because it's rather
informal. It's fine to use it when you're
speaking. We tend to use it a lot when we're
speaking; I just used it. But when you're writing,
and especially when you're writing more formally,
you want to use something more formal. For
example, you could say, "I'm extremely interested."
Instead of saying, "I so appreciate", again, "so"
is informal, you can say, "I truly appreciate",
"I sincerely appreciate". Okay? And these wonderful expressions with intensifiers,
you can learn, and you can start to use them
more naturally in your writing. Okay? It'll also
show that your English is much more advanced.
Okay. Of course, the verbs and the nouns that
we use are very important, and sometimes people
don't realize that they're using an informal
vocab... Verb. For example, instead of saying,
"Fix the problem", what could you say? This is
something we just say casually. Right? So, we
could say, "We need to resolve the issue." Or
instead of saying, "We need to use the new ideas
in our company", you need to say, "I need to
implement these ideas", or "implement these
recommendations", or "implement these policies".
Okay? And in fact, in my series on Speak Like
a Manager, we talk about exactly how to raise
your English level by using these kind of very
powerful verbs. Okay? So you might want to check
that out. Also, certain nouns. People have gotten
used to using a lot of nouns when we're speaking
casually, like "stuff", you know, "I need to
take... Get my stuff.", "Can you give me those
things?" or "Hey, you guys.", and that's fine
in regular, casual conversation, even at work,
with people you really know well. But when you're
writing a formal email, don't use that language.
Okay? It really doesn't look good. Say what you
want to say. Talk... Use the exact word. Instead
of saying "stuff", say "material", say "presentation",
whatever it is you're talking about. Say
"project". Instead of "things", say "equipment"
or whatever. Instead of saying "the guys in the
office", you can say "my colleagues", "my
employees", "my team". Okay? Use a more professional
word. All right. And last is something called
"redundancies". You might have seen my lesson
on this. If not, you can check it out. And redundancies are basically when we repeat
words unnecessarily. And this is done a lot
without people even realizing it, which is why
I also wrote some years ago a resource which you
can download which has a list of, like, more than
100 redundancies which people are using without
realizing. So let me give you an example of a
redundancy. So if you say, for example, "another
alternative". "Another alternative" is we could
meet on Sunday. Well, "alternative" means
another option, so you don't need to say "another
alternative". That's redundant or repetitive, and
you don't need to do it. If you say, "We need to
progress forward", well, that's also wrong, actually. That's a redundancy, because "to
progress" means to go forward, so you don't need
this word, and you don't need this word. Okay?
"We need to progress", and you can drop that
other word. Okay? So I know there were a lot
of different points here, but I hope that step by
step you understood them. And what we're going to
do now is we're going to look at an email which
makes some of these mistakes, and you're going
to help me to check it so that you can really
remember these points very well. All right.
So now let's check this email together and see how
we should correct it and improve on it. All right?
Now, this is the situation. So this person,
George, wrote an email to his boss, his new boss,
his new manager. So he doesn't really have a very
informal relationship yet; they don't know each
other very well, so of course George should be
writing in a semi-formal to formal way. But let's
what George wrote and how we can improve on
it. All right, so this was the subject line,
presentation. Is that enough? Well, it's better
than not writing anything, but it doesn't tell
us anything, doesn't tell his boss anything about
that presentation. So we'll see later how we might
improve on that. Okay? So he started the email
by saying, "Hey, Jim." All right, so what's wrong
there? It's obviously it's too informal. We can't
say, "Hey, Jim" to your manager, not the new one.
So how could he have started? Let's say his name
was Jim Walker, he could have said, "Dear Mr.
Walker", or if he knows him by first name and if
he calls him by first name, then he could have
written, "Dear Jim". All right? Because until Jim
is writing back in an informal way, he can't write
back in an informal way. Okay. Then he writes,
"Hope you are good" with an emoticon. So, of course,
we learned no emoticons. Right? So we're going
to get rid of that. This part was not very good.
"Hope you are", no, we want to write out the words in
full. "You are", and also not, "Hope you are good".
This whole expression should really be cancelled,
and what you could say instead is, "Dear Jim",
let's say, "I hope you have been well." Let's
say you've been away. "I hope you've been well.
I hope all is well." Then he says, "My flight
to London is all messed up, so I'll be returning
back on Wednesday." So, what's wrong there?
Okay. "My flight to London is all messed up." So,
that's slang, and you don't want to use slang.
What you could say instead, "My flight to London
has been delayed." All right? If that's the
situation. And so, "I will be returning", or
here you could say, because it's somebody
you know, you could use the contraction here.
"So, I'll be returning back on Wednesday."
All right. So, again, here we have an issue,
because "returning back" is what? A redundancy,
because "to return" means to go back or come back,
right? So, we don't need to use the word "back".
"So, I'll be returning on Wednesday." Again,
"wed" is an abbreviation, and you don't want to use an abbreviation, so you should
write out the word, okay, completely. Also, when
an abbreviation is used like that at the end of a
word, on "wed", what does that mean? I don't know.
I don't understand. Okay? So, make sure it's very
clear. Okay? "Can you send my presentation to the guys in engineering ASAP?" Okay. So,
a few problems there, right? Can you see them?
So, here, even though I didn't mention it
specifically, of course, when you're writing
a more formal email, you should be polite,
as polite as possible. So, what's missing here? We could really say, "Could you...
Could you please send my presentation not to
the guys?" Because "guys" is too informal and
very casual. So, we could say to the... Let's
say to the... Okay, here, he said the guys in
engineering, so we could say to the engineering
department, to the engineering team, or whatever
it means, whatever the situation is. And instead
of saying "ASAP", you should write out the words
as soon as possible. Okay? So, that's also an
error there. Then he says, "Thanks". Now, "thanks"
is more informal, so actually, if you want to be
a little bit more formal, say, "Thank you." Okay?
Sorry. Thank you. And "take care", again, very
informal, because you don't want to say that.
You could say, "Best regards". And don't just
write "G". If his name is George, you should
write out his name. Okay? So, here you see that
even in a short email, there could actually be
lots of mistakes when you're trying to write in
a more formal way, so pay attention to those 12
principles that we talked about, and that way,
you will know that your email is written in the
right way for the right audience. Okay? So, if
you'd like to do a quiz on this, please go to
our website at www.engvid.com. There, you can do
a quiz to review these 12 concepts and really know
them well, so the next time you need to write a
formal email, you'll know exactly how. And then,
you can also... Don't forget to subscribe to
my YouTube channel. Okay? Because that way,
you can keep on getting lots of lessons that I hope will help you to learn English
much more efficiently and with a lot more fun
and relaxation. All right? And remember those
about six or seven lessons that I told you that
there are links? So, in the lesson description,
there are links to my lessons which have detailed explanations of some of those
points that we spoke about, so don't forget to
check those out because that will help you to go
even further with your English. Bye for now. All the best with your English.