Writing Effective Business E-mails

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Chapter 5, "Writing Business Messages," deals with the appropriate and most effective ways to compose written forms of business communication. As we all know, e-mail is one of the most common forms of written professional communication, but at the same time, it is also one of the most commonly misused. For our activity today, we will be exploring some of the strategies and pitfalls of composing e-mails and getting a little practice.

First, you should search the library's Article Research Databases to find the article "You are What You Write: Six Ways to Ensure That Your E-Mail Makes--Not Breaks--Your Career," which is in the Fall 2005 issue of Public Relations Quarterly.

After you have found this article, please read and discuss it in small groups. Then, based on what you learned in this article and also Chapter 5, please revise the e-mail in Exercise 5.13 on page 167. We will discuss both the article and revision as a class.