Episode 12 - How to write good English emails

(Transcribed by TurboScribe.ai. Go Unlimited to remove this message.) Hi, and welcome to The 3 English Experts. I'm Birgit. I'm Dave. And I'm Rebecca. And welcome to this episode. 3 English Experts is your English podcast to help you speak better English and create a positive and happy mindset for your English learning journey. Hello, everybody. Today, we are going to talk about email writing, how to write a good email, how to start it, what the content could be like, and what the ending should be. So what I recommend to my learners always is whenever you get emails from native speakers, it's a good idea to just copy what they do. Take a note when you like the opening sentences, the saying hello, the saying goodbye, and words you come across in between, nice adjectives they use, words you haven't seen before. So if you are attentive and can pick that up, that's a good idea. Take a note on the side and then use it again or even copy paste. Yes, but what people struggle with and ask a lot is the opening. What can I say? Do I have to say Mr. So-and -so and even the surname? What's this strange ending I'm looking forward to and why is it here? So this is what Germans usually struggle with. And let's ask maybe Rebecca first, the first native speaker, how she feels about it. And what about a hi or hello in the opening of an email, Rebecca? Yes, I have to say, this is a topic that always comes up when we get onto emailing is the structure of how should I structure, how should I start, how should I open? It is a huge thing and I think it is confusing. The first, actually the first thing I want to say that I correct all the time with my German learners, and I think it is similar in other languages, is this point of Dear Dave, comma, next line, always needs to be a capital letter. So I see this all the time that people start their sentence with a small letter with lower case. So thank you for your mail should always be capital T, always. And it does. I know in German, it's lowercase. I know that, but it just looks strange for a native speaker. It looks strange. And it's one little thing. It's just one little thing that you can correct so quickly and so easily. But one of the first things that I do say, first line, for us, it's a new sentence, although the Germans see it as a comma and then it's a continuation, for us, it's a new sentence. So always start with uppercase. Dave, do you see that a lot with your clients? Yeah, absolutely. But coming back to this hello question, I think this is something I often see or I often get mails from people saying hello. And this is something where I think as natives, we wouldn't start off with hello, especially in an email, maybe on the phone. Of course, when you're on the phone, you say hello, you answer the phone, you say hello. But in an email, I think it's more, you know, the hi or the hey. I often use hiya, but that's just me. But that's also a possibility. But I wouldn't suggest using hello as a start off. Yeah. What I also don't like, this seems to be, I'm not sure, I don't want to, I think it might be a bit of an American thing, but I sometimes get mails. I've had some mails from the States where they just say my name, they just go, Rebecca. And there's no hi. I think it takes two letters, two letters to say, hi, Rebecca, and they just go, Rebecca. And I instantly feel like someone's bossing me around, someone's telling me what to do, you know? And I just think it takes two seconds. So I would avoid doing that. I personally don't like that. I would say, hi, Rebecca, comma, first line, capital letter. Thank you for your call, or I'm writing to let you know, or how, oh yeah, this is the next thing. How quickly do we go into our topic? So Dave, should we say, what would be your feeling of how would you start? Would you say, how are you, or how are you doing, or how do you start your mails? Well, I lived in England and I know this is a phrase people would use. So I would naturally say, how are you? I hope you're fine. But German natives might not get the sense of that. It is important, isn't it to you, Bridget? Definitely. Absolutely. I always say to people, when you're writing, you know, sometimes people say, oh, do I need all this small talk? And do I need to be so polite? And I always say to people, when they're reading your email, they cannot hear your voice and they cannot see your face. You know, when you're speaking to someone on Teams or you're on the phone, they can hear your tone of voice. If you're being friendly, if you're being a bit not friendly, if you're smiling. When you read an email, you open it up and you have no idea, you know, who this person is or how they are. So I think tone in an email is really important. And it's just one line. It doesn't have to be your life story. It's just hope you're well, hope you're having a good day. Just wanted to ask if it's a short thing, but it really does make a difference. So keep that in mind. Yes. And you said that before, Rebecca, you said, I hope you're well. And David said, how are you? You felt a bit like Germans seem to be inclined and seeing the need to answering that. So it's just a phrase, isn't it? So you don't expect them to tell them really how you were or how you are. Yeah, I think that's the problem. How are you? It is a question. If I'm speaking to friends and I say, how are you? I really do want to know, like, how are you doing? What's going on? But if I just, you know, say in an email, someone in a cafe, how are you? It's not like, yes, I'm great. I know. I feel awful today. There's no. And that's why I would personally not write. How are you at the beginning of an email? I would not write a question. I always advise my clients to say, hope you are well, or hope you're having a good week. Hope this mail finds you well. Exactly. And then it's not a question because then they don't feel obliged to answer that question. They just can just say, thanks for your mail. Right. Yeah. But I think it's always, I mean, I again, when people say to me, it's not working with the Brits, why don't they answer me or why is this not quite working? I say, well, show me some of your mails then. And then they show me the mails. And it's got no sort of, hi, how are you? It doesn't take long to say, how are you? Hope you are well. And especially if you know the person quite well, just to have, I always suggest like a kind of sandwich. So you've got your little bit of informal, you know, chit chat stuff. If you know someone quite well, if they're a football fan, how's their team going? Maybe mention their family if you know them really well, or a colleague that you both know quite well. But whatever it might be, then the actual point of the mail. And then at the end, some kind of blob again. So again, you know, it's the sandwich, the informal, the chat, the chat, and then the goodbye. Right. And I think this is something we can talk about as well with the goodbye. But I think that's, you know, and also going back to what Birgit says, copy what you get. So if you get somebody who is not doing what we suggest, and they are very just direct, even Brits or Americans, because this does exist as well, of course, there are all different types of writers. Some are very direct, some are a little bit longer. You know, if you're realizing that this guy just is very direct, be direct back. I totally agree with Birgit, copy and paste, mirror them. Yeah. But if you get the feeling this person needs a little bit more chat, a bit more talking to, then do that. Yeah. So mirror the other person, not in a bad way, but just to, I think, just to, you know, make communications easier between the two of you. I definitely agree with the copy paste point from Birgit. I do that with German. So, you know, when I was learning German, when people wrote me something and I would see a phrase and think, oh, I like that, I would just copy it and then just copy and paste and use it yourself. And that's part of language learning is listening, being aware, noticing things and stealing it in a way. You're not stealing it, but just copy paste is so useful. And, you know, writing an email, it's not something you have to sit down at home and learn. It's like it's a learning by doing process. You try new phrases, you see new phrases, then you use it once or twice and then you know it. It's in your kind of list of phrases. Yeah. And how do you feel about long sentences and emails, Rebecca? Because I know in the business world, when we want to express ourselves, we tend to make up rather long sentences in German language. And then it's difficult to put this into English. I know this from my clients. Germans get very wordy when they get serious. They get very wordy. And I'm looking for the verb. I'm like, where's the verb? My advice, you know, people say, where should I put the commas? People often ask about punctuation. That's another topic. And I always say to them, often, if you've got a comma in your sentence, your sentence is too long. Make two sentences like that. Yeah. Just maybe your sentence is just too long. Some of course, sometimes you do need a comma. But I think, you know, two sentences, one idea per sentence, you know, that's another. I think, Dave, you mentioned this before, the kiss idea, keep it short and simple. Don't overcomplicate. It's not a book, you know, it's not a screenplay. It's just an email communicating something. And so, yeah, keep sentences short if possible. It would be my advice. Bullet points. Make things that are good. Bullet points. Short and simple. Yeah, definitely. Does it somehow put you off as native speakers when or what puts you off in an email? I mean, you said at the opening, if the sentences get too long, too complicated, or wouldn't you mind? I mean, if you see that's not a native speaker, is that OK for you? What do you think of the person? Because I think that's what's lying behind, isn't it? It's the fear of what will the other person think of me, of my command of English? How do you perceive an email from an obviously not perfect English writer? So you think people write longer sentences to look better? I don't know. Is that what you're saying? Well, in general. So have you got a sense of when you see an email, you say, oh, he's not good at English. What do you think? Something like that? Or it's not? I think I would care more about the style and the, you know, is he being polite? And OK, yeah. So even if there are mistakes in there, if the email is polite and the message, you know, I think that would be more important to me than fancy sentences. And just I was discussing with clients recently, we were talking about what's about emailing. And I think the other thing we need to keep in mind is so many emails never get read because people skim through emails. And I think the longer your email is, the bigger the risk that people will just not read it because people do not have time and they get hundreds of emails every day. And so they see a long one and they go and they either park it and say, right, I'll read it later because I don't have time now, or they just skim and probably miss some of the points. So you're risking. That's the other point. You're risking that people will just not read it. And so if it's still long. Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah. Very good point. Yeah. Back to keep it short and simple, actually. Yeah. Exactly. But this idea of copy and paste the other people, I think that's also a very useful thing. What about the endings then? I mean, or finishing off, Birgit sort of alluded to it earlier with the I look forward to. So why is it hearing and seeing or meeting and not to hear or to see or to meet or whatever? Birgit, can you just maybe enlighten us as to why it's not the other one? Well, as a grammar point, gerund, gerundium, it's just das Schauen, das Hören. It's a noun construction, but it looks funny to learners. But there's no option. So you shouldn't write. I look forward to hear from you. Yeah. Doesn't work. That doesn't work for you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I really feel like sometimes I need it tattooed on my head because I correct that every single day. Dave, do you correct that all the time? Yeah. All the time. All the time. Yeah. And I think it's good to say you can use different beginnings. I'm looking. I look. Looking. And often people say, but can you have double ing? Looking forward to hearing. I don't know why they really don't like double ing, but yes, you can. And yes, you should. Is that right, Birgit? Does double ing make you proud? It is. I've never heard that. I love that. Double ing. Yes. I had the same conversation with a client the other day. So I was trying to point to look forward to hearing, looking forward to hearing. And he thought we were discussing the look or the looking forward. But the more difficult part is look forward to doing something. Zu dem tun, dem machen. Because often after to, you would follow with an infinitive to go, you know, and that's why it makes people feel uncomfortable. But if you zoom out, then the to here, correct me if I'm wrong, Birgit, is acting as a preposition. And so after, also after a preposition, the verb should be put into this sort of ing form. And that's another reason why it's, so it is the gerund. Yeah. So the verb has this ing form at the end. Coming to the very end then, when you say goodbye, I'm often seeing things like best regards, best wishes. And then there's always the yours sincerely and yours faithfully. And again, are you writing to Brits? Are you writing to Americans? What is the state of affairs nowadays? I think this is a big issue as well. I generally now, to be honest with you, end up finishing off with take care to whoever I write to. So take care. That's it. I think that was a COVID thing, was it? When everybody was trying to be like, take care, take care, take care. But I don't know. Where are we at at the moment? I don't know. But there's nothing wrong with best regard, kind regards, do you feel? I don't know why, but I really don't like warm regards. Warm? Why are they warm? I just, I don't know why, but I don't like warm. No. Too close. Too close. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But where does that come from? I don't know, but I get that sometimes. Warm. I don't know. Kind regards. I would always go with kind regards. Best regards. Regards. I think it's okay on its own. Best. I think we should fight for more take care, guys. You're pushing take care. Take care. Yeah, come on. I mean, it's, you know, if you know the people, why, yeah, be a bit more like, you know, easy going, a bit more informed. I think that should be a big takeaway from this one. Solidarity, brother. Let's go with take care. And no warm regards. Yes. Definitely not. And no hello at the beginning. And no hello. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Very good. So what does Shared GDP propose or suggest, Dave? Yes. Tell us, Dave. Oh, yeah. Well, of course, I did my homework. I looked into ChatGPT as always. And you'll be amazed what ChatGPT does. For those of you that work with ChatGPT, I'm sure you know what I'm talking about. So just as like a quick overview, you could ask ChatGPT to do pretty much whatever you like. Let's say you write a short email and you just want it checking for grammar or whatever or for maybe, shall we say, proofread. That's one possibility. And so it will correct you. You can also ask it to maybe better points that you've written. So rewrite it with maybe a more appropriate way or better vocabulary or whatever. Or of course, you can go the full hog, as we say in English, and have the thing written completely for you. Again, that depends on what you want. Do you have an email that's come in and you want to put the email in, which is always a bit of a problem on data protection, all this kind of thing. But you could put in the email that you have received and you would like to ask for ChatGPT to make you a reply to that. That's also possible. But what I did today was, is I just asked, for example, a simple situation where you asked your colleagues to send you an update on the work that they've been doing before close of business, C-O-B, close of business. And then I asked ChatGPT to write it in a chatty, informal way. So again, it's all about the prompts. It's all about what you tell ChatGPT to do. And so it spit out a very interesting little email. These emails will be in the show notes. I'm not going to read them out. But I would encourage you to have a look at them. I think they're really cool. Maybe just one phrase to come back to our point, we started with, hey team, right? So a bit more of an American way. Hope your day is going as fantastic as mine. OK, so again, the how are you kind of thing, a little bit over the top, a little bit over the top. Hope your day is going well. As fantastic as mine, because I'm so amazing and I have a fantastic life. But it says awesome work, yeah? And I like some of the other phrases it uses as well. If you could shoot me a quick update. Oh, that's nice. Nice phrases. So copy and paste. Then guys, I went on to ask it, please rewrite in a more business-like tone. So maybe if you want to do that at the beginning, say in a business-like tone, of course you can write the German words and ask it to do it in English in the same way. That's no problem. And again, you can see the difference immediately. If you read in the show notes, you can see the difference immediately between the two styles of English. But both are very good. Then I asked ChachiPT to come up with a list of trendy male communication phrases. Trendy? Trendy. Trendy. Oh, good. Here we go. You're showing your age now, Dave. People don't say trendy anymore, I don't think. Oh, OK. They say in. I think my parents would say trendy. What do we say then? In? Today? I don't know. In. In. Popular. Cool. Cool. Cool. OK. Cool. Cool. I like cool. If you've got teenagers being it, what do people say? I don't know. Cool. Cringe. But that's the opposite. Cringe. That's the opposite, yeah. So, Rebecca. Circle back. Circle back. Sorry. Were you asking me what it means? Or were you asking me to circle back? Yeah. Would you like the phrase? Do I like the phrase? Would you use it? Circle back on this at the earliest convenience. So, this is examples that ChatGPT spat out for you. I don't think I actually would use that, but I know what it means, but I don't think I would say that. Birgit, would you understand that? Yeah, I would understand that, so come back to me. But is then ChatGTP looking for special things? I mean, you obviously don't use that very often. It's more of an American thing, and I would imagine it will come over more and more with time. Okay, okay. I hadn't heard about it for about a year ago. Then you start seeing it more and more. That's why I called it trendy. I think it depends where you work. If you're working with people from the States, and obviously you see more of these typical phrases. I think mine would be with these trendy phrases is don't overuse them. Don't have too many in one. Have one or two that you like, but don't have them in every sentence because then it's just too much. That's what ChatGPT, I think, does sometimes. It puts too much in. It's like over the top. Overachiever, yeah. Is it a he or is it a she? We don't know. It is. It needs a better name. I'm sick of going ChatGPT. Can we not just call it Bob or something? Isn't it a bit of a mouthful? It's a bit of a mouthful, isn't it? It's getting more difficult with time, yeah. We can call it Bob. What did Bob say? I can tell you what Bob said. Any more comments from Bob? Well, that was it, really. As I said, there were 20. Maybe just one more. Here we go. I just had a really nice one I looked at, and we talked about it before the session, didn't we? What was it? Just a heads up. Heads up, yeah. There's a quick huddle scheduled for tomorrow. I like the huddle thing. It's a bit like rugby. It's going to say it's a bit like rugby. That's a scrum, but you know what I mean. Kind of a huddle. An aggressive huddle. But you see, that's already on an advanced level. So if that was a beginner learning to write email, that would be too much to take in, really. So this is the point. If you're at a lower level, keep it short and simple, like big. It says copy, paste, some simple phrases. And then, of course, as you get more confident, you can, like Dave said, use ChatGPT. To learn all this stuff as well. New things, new phrases. So you can improve your style as you go. And I think just using, sorry Birgit, but just to use ChatGPT as a learning tool. Exactly, yeah. I mean, if you have time. Yeah, that's a good idea, yeah. And you see the difference between the chatty way of writing, and then you scroll down and you see the business-like tone. And I think the business-like tone, you can get a lot of useful business English emailing phrases from them, from Bob. Yes, and I think that is useful, and that is a very good point. I just want to stress here for our listeners who are at a lower level, there is nothing wrong with writing straight, polite emails using not so, yeah, fantastic or fancy words. That's completely okay for any native talker. So you're not expecting emails to be fancy and full of these words. No, that's important. Communication and the message is important. It's not about sounding fancy. I just have one last question. This is a sort of a German thing. Germans always talk about colleagues. My colleagues. My colleague. And I have to say, I started saying it now because I've lived here for so long, but we don't really say that, do we Dave? We don't talk about your colleagues. You don't? No, no. What is it? Is it a mate? It would say your co-workers or your teammates or, you know, a guy I work with, you know. Oh, but there's a woman at work or there's a guy at work or the guy who sits next to me at work or the guy in for marketing. And I think, yeah, we don't really use that. Colleague for me is very formal. It sounds very old fashioned or something. But I know in German it's normal. I think it's an old fashioned word, but it's still in use. My colleague. My colleague, yeah. It hasn't got that extremely old fashioned touch to it. I think it's just a normal word to say co-worker or teammate. Maybe we have to teach that more, that in English people would not use that as often. That's a good point. So next time we are going to put Birgit in the hot seat. So we're going to, we have told you that, yes. Basically, we're going to talk about Birgit's teaching style, her philosophy, what she offers her clients, her books, and also the fact that she's a non-native teaching English, which some people, you know, there's all these questions. What's the benefit? And there are so many benefits from learning from another language learner and a non-native. So tune in next time to find out more about Birgit. We will be here too, Dave. Absolutely. Of course. See you later, alligator. See you next time. Next time. Bye bye. Thank you so much for pressing play today. If you have any comments, questions, or perhaps suggestions for future episodes, feel free to contact us at our website, 3englishexperts.com. Have a great day and see you next time.