All about Words: online email course and storytelling in business writing
How do you follow up unanswered emails?
I was talking to a friend about following up unanswered emails and she sometimes resorts to forwarding the previous email she’s sent with a new message at the top.
How do you follow up unanswered emails?
Online email course
If you want to improve your email-writing skills, sign up for my revamped online email course. It covers:
- Manage your emails
- Brush up on email etiquette
- Think first
- Write specific subject lines
- Get to the point
- Write well (This section includes how to write difficult emails, e.g. apologising or saying ‘no’)
- Set the tone
- Pay attention to the detail
Normally A$99, I’m offering you $30 off until 20 July with the following coupon code: emails.
PS The course includes a few more ideas for following up emails!
Storytelling in business and copywriting
At a recent workshop, a woman said she was often told to ‘tell a story’ in her business writing. But story-telling didn’t come naturally to her in a business context, so she didn’t know what they meant.
I inwardly groaned in sympathy with this woman, thinking about two common types of storytelling that grate when I see them in business documents: the long winding road and failure-to-success stories.
The long winding road
Many writers take readers on a long winding road to explain everything they have done to solve a problem or progress a project. It’s as if they want to prove how busy they’ve been and they’re implying that every personal step they’ve taken along the way is important to you, the reader. Whereas what you really want is a clear picture of the solution to the problem or an overview of where the project is at.
This recital of every step reminds me of six-year-old writing. (I am sure not all six-year-old children write like this, but mine did.)
Then… Then… Then… And then…
And all the while the reader is wondering, is this relevant and will it ever get anywhere?
Read the rest of the blog.
Readers’ questions
Referencing
Questions: Do you capitalise the first letter in a subtitle after a colon in a reference? Is the subtitle in title case or sentence case?
Answer: I always put the title in title case and the subtitle in sentence case. I have always introduced the subtitle with an initial capital.
I checked with the Australian Style manual and it says: ‘A colon is used to introduce the subtitles of books, articles in periodicals and so on…No capital is necessary after the colon in these contexts.’
Dare I disagree? I’m not an expert on referencing – what do you think?
End messages in emails
Question: Which of these end messages are correct?
- Kind regards
- Kind Regards
- Kindest regards
- Kindest Regards
Answer: Kind regards, Kindest regards and Regards are all commonly used and are ‘correct’. But you don’t need an initial capital for Regards when it is preceded by Kind or Kindest.
Interesting stuff about writing
10 best business books written by women
Have you read any of them? What’s the best business book you’ve read written by a woman?
When to capitalize articles (such as ‘the’) in publication names
I have never been sure whether to write The Sydney Morning Herald or the Sydney Morning Herald. I learnt that experts don’t agree. Read this Grammar Girl post.
11 EdTech tools that make it easy to learn spelling
Do you use any of these tools? I stick with Word’s spell checker even though it’s not perfect.
Improve your business writing
Listen to an interview (or read the transcript) with Bryan Garner, American lawyer, lexicographer and teacher. I liked his idea of using a ‘madman, architect, carpenter and judge’ to plan a document.
Quote of the month
‘Get it down. Take chances. It may be bad, but it’s the only way you can do anything good.’
William Faulkner
