Why proofread your official email or letter?

Whether it is a letter from HR to an employee, a job offer email to a successful recruit, an email from a lawyer to a client, or even instructions from a team manager to a team member, it is crucial to ensure it is drafted in error-free, unequivocal and straightforward language.

But how can you ensure your official email is free of language problems?

First, once you have written the email, you will need to go through each word and each sentence to ensure there are no grammatical errors, typos or any mispunctuated sentences. Make sure t

here are no missing full stops or extraneous commas.

As part of this, you will need to check that your electronic letter follows the required English variant. If you are writing an email to an American company, recruit or any other recipient in the US, you will probably need to make sure your email uses American English spellings.

Similarly, if you are sending communication via email to an individual or a corporate recipient in the UK for instance, you will need to adhere to British English spellings.

Because emails sometimes do not have spelling checkers on, typos can seep into your text. It is always a good idea to write your letter – especially if it is quite an important one – in a word document so that can you spell-check it properly.

Once you have checked everything was correct and as you intended, you can copy and paste into your email client.

Is that everything? 

Ensuring an important official electronic letter is written to a high standard does not mean checking it for grammar, punctuation and spelling only.

These are the very basic and essential elements that should be thoroughly checked. However, clarity is key to writing an effective official email.

What your purpose of writing the letter is, you need to ensure – without any shade of doubt – that the reader will get precisely the message and communication you are sending them without any equivocation or ambiguity.

Pay attention to each word, phrase and sentence you are writing. Read whatever you have written over and over again to ensure the meaning is crystal clear and remove any chance of confusion on the part of the recipient.

Together with clarity, official emails should be written in an appropriate manner.

If you are writing a job offer letter that will be sent by email to a successful candidate, you must ensure it is written in a formal – rather than relaxed or casual – style. The language used should not be sloppy or awkward, but rather elevated, solid and clear.

In a nutshell, your email speaks volumes about you. So never underestimate the importance of ensuring your official electronic letters and emails are very thoroughly checked before they are sent.

If it is not a confidential email or you have no problem anyone one in your organisation seeing it, you can ask someone to cast their eyes on your email before sending it out – especially if it is an important one.

Alternatively, you can instruct a professional English language proofreading and editing services provider to do this for you – either on a one-off or regular basis.

At the Ultimate Proofreader, we provide a confidential, secure proofreading and editing services that cover emails, electronic emails and other types of B2B communications.

Why not get in touch with us a free, instant quote? We also offer exclusive discounts. Email us today.

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