Email Faux Pas to Avoid (unless you want to look like a dick)

Office life is full of opportunities to build meaningful connections. It’s also rampant with technology that, while helpful and convenient, can make it easy to damage professional relationships unintentionally.

Email is one of the virtual minefields that we wade through every day, usually without a second thought. It’s practically like talking on the phone or in-person now since we’re all so used to it, right?

Not really.

Email lacks facial expressions, gestures, pitch, and tone. It leaves us at the mercy of our vocabulary, grammatical prowess, and best intentions - and without any visual or auditory cues to or from the audience.

No wonder it’s such a hotbed for misunderstandings.

You can write more thoughtfully and avoid looking like a dick in your next email by following these simple principles:

• Always include a brief greeting and friendly sign-off. Jumping straight into your subject matter without any greeting or niceties and ending your email abruptly can send the message that you don’t value the reader. It can also make you appear cold or indifferent.

• Limit negative words. Some that come up most frequently are; don’t, didn’t, can’t, won’t, no, none, bad, poor, never, neglect, mistake, wrong, error, impossible, unable, fail, ridiculous.

Here's a more complete list of negative words.

With context, these can be used sparingly to clarify a message, but you still should try to limit them. Avoid negative words completely when describing people or outcomes whenever possible.

How to sound like a dick: He’s wrong. I told Jack it wouldn’t work to resubmit the case, and it obviously didn’t.

Better: Since we’ve already tried resubmitting the case, let's get together and brainstorm the next steps that might get us the outcome we’re looking for.

An example of a more benign way to use negative words (still in a limited capacity) would be something like, “I think something is wrong with the printer; it isn’t responding to any of the admin computers today.”

Notice how the primary negative word, “wrong,” in the second example is directed at an inanimate object (the printer) rather than a person, and the extent of the issue as it’s understood is clarified (the printer isn’t responding to admin computers)?

• "You" as the blame game. This is some low-hanging fruit, but it is an easy habit to fall into, and it’s one of the whoopsies I see the most in corporate email.

The fix is simple. Instead of writing a blame-heavy sentence focused on an action or lack of action, rephrase the same information into a passive sentence.

How to sound like a dick: Hey Tracy, I noticed you still didn’t run the New Accounts report like I asked you to on Monday.

Better: Hey Tracy, I noticed the New Accounts report still isn’t available. Please send it over as soon as possible. Thank you.

• Being dramatic/extra/over-the-top. Sometimes we’re emotional while writing, and it shows up in the words we choose, and as a result, the overall tone of our message. One place drama can quickly slip into your message is with adjectives.

These guys like to travel in packs too. Usually, if you spot one dramatic adjective, you’ll find more sprinkled throughout the email.

Examples: It’s a massive undertaking. There’s absolutely no margin for error. It’s extremely unlikely. Make sure they know it’s incredibly important.

• Caps lock - it's just aggressive. A classic faux pas that still happens all the time in email. Sometimes it’s just a half-assed attempt to make something stand out. And it works but at the risk of reading as aggressive. CAPS LOCK IS GROUND-ZERO TERRITORY FOR LOOKING LIKE A DICK IN EMAILS. It's literally the internet's version of yelling.

Use bold or italic or even bold italic font instead. Whichever style you choose, stick with that choice throughout the email.

• Leaving obvious ‘next questions’ unanswered. If you know someone will likely need or want more information, include it. Try to anticipate the reader's response and give them the tools they will need to take action or respond. The goal is to avoid forcing them to immediately ask you follow-up questions that you could have anticipated if you’d given your message more thought.

• CC’ing a superior when you request something from a coworker. Nothing says, “I don’t trust your work and don’t want to be responsible for the outcome.” quite like cc’ing your boss. Talk about a relationship killer.

Unless you are purposefully looping the boss in because you want your coworker to feel the heat, or it's a cc'ing cycle established by your boss for the project at hand, don’t do this.

• CC’ing people when they aren’t truly involved. Remember when all of us would get a lecture in school because one kid did something naughty and we all knew exactly who the message was really aimed at? Or when the teacher would call a kid out in front of the whole class to show who’s boss and make Timmy feel the heat of embarrassment as a deterrent for future fuckups?

This is the adult equivalent, and it’s still annoying, and quite frankly, rude. If you want to call someone out, do it directly in a message to them and only them.

Avoid many of these whoopsies by reading your complete email out loud before hitting send.

Yeah, I said out loud. Under your breath counts.

Have you received a recent email where the sender comes off as a Grade-A dick? Did it hit any of these points or something else? I’d love to hear about it so we can all improve together! Comment below.