4 things you don’t know about emails

Send Emails more professionally

by Mehdi Safavi | Aug 2, 2019 | Writing

Sending an Email is fast and easy. That’s true. And you know how to write a good letter/email, but most English learners don’t know much about different sections of electronic mail. In this lesson, you will get familiar with four aspects of email writing that you probably never used (well).

1) Cc:

“Cc” is short for “Carbon Copy“. No, I don’t mean that thin blue sheet for making a copy of what you are writing. With the invent of the Internet and email, it has taken a digital form and now it is a copy of an email sent to an addressee other than the main addressee. But remember that the intended recipient will know who else is reading the email!

2) Bcc:

What if you don’t want the recipient to know who else the email is sent to? That’s exactly when “Bcc” comes in handy. A Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) is a copy sent to an addressee that is not visible to the main and carbon copy addressees. So, if you put Mr. X’s email address in the “To:” field, and Mr. Y’s email address in the “Bcc:” field, both will receive the email but Mr. X will never find out that Mr. Y has got the email too.

3) Subject:

The first thing you see in an email just below (or next to) the sender’s name is the subject, yet few people use it well. If you are emailing someone to invite them to dinner, for example, let the recipient know what your email is about by putting this on the subject line: “Dinner invitation”. They will see this even before they open your email. Do you want your email to be taken seriously? Don’t leave the subject field blank.

4) Signature:

“Sent from my iPhone”
“Sent from Samsung Mobile”
“Sent from my BlackBerry 10 smartphone”

These are examples of automatic signatures that are put at the end of your emails instead of your REAL signature! Do you like them? I don’t. — Unless you really like to show off your phone’s model!

Make your email more personalised and authentic by adding your own signature.

About the Author

CEO and Co-founder of Juice Academy

Mehdi Safavi is a Cambridge certified English teacher (CELTA Grade A), IDP-trained IELTS expert, Sussex Downs College TESOL with 17+ years of teaching & teacher training experience. More about him →