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- Guide to English Email Greetings: Formal and Informal Scenarios Explained
Guide to English Email Greetings: Formal and Informal Scenarios Explained
- University of Washington: Business English (Socializing/Meetings/Planning/Negotiations/Presentations) Tip:It takes [2:37] to read this article.
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DescriptionNow that you know how to write a good subject line, let's take a look at how to write a greeting in an email. What greeting you use depends of course on who you're writing to and your relationship to that person. Let's look at several situations. If you know the name of the person but you've not met him or her, you can use these greetings. These are more formal. Which greeting is used for a man? Which greeting is used for a woman? Right. Mr. is used for a man and Ms. is used for a woman. If you know the person's name and you want to be a little less formal, you can just use the first name. If you're answering an email and the other person used his or her first name in the closing, you can use the first name in your greeting. However, remember we don't use Mr. or Ms. with a person's first name. Unlike in a letter, we don't need to use deer. It's perfectly okay to use just the person's family name with Mr. or Ms. or the first name. If we want to be a little friendlier to someone we know, like a friend or colleague, we sometimes use hi and the first name. Now, what if you don't know the name of the person you're writing to? The best thing to do is use dear with the position of the person. However, we don't use the company name after dear. We always address an email to a person. If we want to send an email to a group of people, we can use something like this. The last two are more informal. If we don't know the name or even the position of the person, then what we can do is just omit the greeting altogether and just start with the body of the email. What about punctuation? Well, notice that we use a period after Mr. or Ms. At the end of the greeting, we use either a colon, which is more formal or a comma. Notice that there's no space before the comma or colon. This is the style in American business writing, but in other styles, the punctuation might be different. For example, in British English, there's no period after Mr. or Ms. and you don't need any punctuation at the end of the greeting. Let's do another quick quiz to review the guidelines for writing a greeting in email.
Listening Comprehension- formal
noun
1. a gown for evening wear
Synonym: dinner dressdinner gownevening gown
2. a lavish dance requiring formal attire
Synonym: ball
- friendly
noun
1. troops belonging to or allied with your own military forces
e.g. friendlies came to their rescue
- greeting
noun
1. (usually plural) an acknowledgment or expression of good will (especially on meeting)
Synonym: salutation
- position
noun
1. the act of positing
an assumption taken as a postulate or axiom2. a job in an organization
e.g. he occupied a post in the treasury
Synonym: postberthofficespotbilletplacesituation
3. the post or function properly or customarily occupied or served by another
e.g. can you go in my stead?
took his place
in lieu ofSynonym: steadplacelieu
4. (in team sports) the role assigned to an individual player
e.g. what position does he play?
5. the act of putting something in a certain place
Synonym: placementlocationlocatingpositioningemplacement
6. the spatial property of a place where or way in which something is situated
e.g. the position of the hands on the clock
he specified the spatial relations of every piece of furniture on the stageSynonym: spatial relation
7. the arrangement of the body and its limbs
e.g. he assumed an attitude of surrender
Synonym: postureattitude
8. a rationalized mental attitude
Synonym: stanceposture
9. a way of regarding situations or topics etc.
e.g. consider what follows from the positivist view
Synonym: viewperspective
10. an item on a list or in a sequence
e.g. in the second place
moved from third to fifth positionSynonym: place
11. an opinion that is held in opposition to another in an argument or dispute
e.g. there are two sides to every question
Synonym: side
12. the particular portion of space occupied by something
e.g. he put the lamp back in its place
Synonym: place
13. the appropriate or customary location
e.g. the cars were in position
14. a point occupied by troops for tactical reasons
Synonym: military position
15. a condition or position in which you find yourself
e.g. the unpleasant situation (or position) of having to choose between two evils
found herself in a very fortunate situationSynonym: situation
16. the relative position or standing of things or especially persons in a society
e.g. he had the status of a minor
the novel attained the status of a classic
atheists do not enjoy a favorable position in American lifeSynonym: status
- punctuation
noun
1. the use of certain marks to clarify meaning of written material by grouping words grammatically into sentences and clauses and phrases
2. the marks used to clarify meaning by indicating separation of words into sentences and clauses and phrases
Synonym: punctuation mark
3. something that makes repeated and regular interruptions or divisions
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