Use the following tips when writing e-mails:

• Get to the point quickly and clearly in your message.
• Focus on what you want the reader to know or to do as a result of reading your e-mail.
• Write for the reader, not for yourself.
• Focus on how your e-mail might be perceived by the reader.
• Think about what the reader's attitude about the topic might be.
• Consider what is most important to the reader.
• Think of the most effective way to appeal to readers. Engage them without entertaining or amusing them.
• Determine how much the reader already knows about the topic and use that as the foundation for your e-mail content.
• Keep your e-mail simple, friendly, straightforward, and brief. People read and respond to concise e-mails more easily.
• Make it relevant to the recipient. Focus on the information the recipient needs. Make it clear what action, if any, is expected. If no action is required, mark the e-mail FYI.
• Be focused in your content.
• E-mail is an informal medium; you are not required to use a formal style, particularly for internal correspondence.
• Include a short and accurate description of the content in the Subject field. Do not bury the subject of your note in the body of your e-mail.
• Use the Reply with History or Forward features. This ensures that your recipient knows exactly what you are responding to and maintains a history for future correspondence.
• Wherever possible, include all pertinent information directly in the body of the e-mail. Because attachments take up more space and require more work for the recipient to view, use them only for tasks that Lotus Notes cannot handle easily, such as spreadsheets and presentations.
• Create your e-mails directly in Lotus Notes. Crafting e-mails in other word processing programs and then copying and pasting them into Lotus Notes can create formatting problems.

Traps

• Do not include extraneous information in your e-mail.
• Avoid redundancy.
• Avoid using all uppercase letters, all lowercase letters, or single line spacing throughout the entire message.
• Do not use electronic signatures on routine e-mail. It increases the size of your e-mail and provides no value to the recipient.
• Avoid unnecessary graphics, including letterhead graphics in memos. The letterhead graphics are the images that are displayed at the top of outgoing messages to the left of your name. Instead, use the Plain Text letterhead, which contains no graphics.
• Avoid emotion when writing an e-mail.
• Never say anything in an e-mail that you would not say in person.