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Questions tagged [email]

Questions about professional etiquette when communicating via email.

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148 votes
9 answers
19k views

How to convince company to not go overboard with email signature?

The signature culture at my company is dangerously close to ridiculous, and this question made me ask about it here. We're an MS Gold Ultra Colour Plus(tm)(c)(fm)(wtf) Partner which is apparently an ...
KlaymenDK's user avatar
  • 3,096
139 votes
12 answers
32k views

Is it legal for company to use my work email to pretend I still work there? [duplicate]

I recently quit my job due to the toxic work environment. My job involved email communication with our clients, and my boss has asked my coworkers to use my email to pretend to be me and talk to our ...
Natasha's user avatar
  • 701
139 votes
8 answers
43k views

HR at my new job just sent me an email saying that I am a volunteer. I've been working here two months under the impression that it's paid work

I started a part-time software development job two months ago. The company I work for has roughly 50% volunteers, but the position I applied for was paid (I still have a copy of the job advertisement)....
toady_two's user avatar
  • 1,491
102 votes
12 answers
45k views

Is it okay to slightly modify a forwarded email?

Sometimes when I forward a professional email, I find myself wanting to slightly modify it. Either because there's a small English mistake (I work with non-native speakers) or because, since they're ...
Nico's user avatar
  • 882
101 votes
10 answers
20k views

In a company crossing multiple timezones, is it rude to send a co-worker a work email in the middle of the night?

I work in a company that spans multiple timezones, and I work with people who are in wildly different timezones from me. For example, some of my coworkers are in the USA and work local hours, others ...
user avatar
99 votes
13 answers
25k views

Should I use my personal e-mail address, or my workplace one, when registering to external websites for work purposes?

I need to register at, for example, oracle.com and docker.com to download some (free) stuff, etc. These accounts would be used only for the job I do at my company. My company doesn't have any ...
Eric Sant'Anna's user avatar
94 votes
11 answers
26k views

Should I tell an employee she's sabotaging herself, two weeks before I leave my job?

I am currently the manager of a team of 15 people. In two weeks' time I will leave this job for a totally different one, in a different sector and a neighbouring city. At my current job, I have one ...
JK39's user avatar
  • 927
93 votes
17 answers
171k views

How to proceed when remote boss doesn't answer emails?

My boss and I sit in different remote sites, several thousands of miles apart. We don't see each other often. On several occasions in the last few months, I have sent him emails asking him for ...
amphibient's user avatar
  • 6,045
90 votes
11 answers
27k views

How to deal with an incendiary email that was recalled

I recently received a critical email from someone who works at a company I deal with. It made a number of broad and inaccurate criticisms of some work I'd done. Copying in several managers for good ...
Jeremy French's user avatar
89 votes
11 answers
16k views

Response to a bugfix suggestion said to just report bugs (not suggest solutions). Is this typical? [closed]

I'm a new employee at a software company, and saw an email sent to an coworker from a system owner, but with the whole dev team CC'd, and it got me a bit worried about the environment. I'm recently ...
MortysFriend's user avatar
89 votes
7 answers
16k views

How should I respond to a colleague who refuses to email me task requests?

This morning one of our designers called me and asked me to complete a task. In order to have a written record, I asked him to email me, but he suddenly said he was going to talk to the manager and ...
gvgvgvijayan's user avatar
89 votes
5 answers
23k views

One of my subordinates' child passed away, how can I inform my team?

One of the people who reports to me lost their son in an accident over the weekend. She has a lot of colleagues that rely on her on a daily basis. She is somewhat of a project owner on a project ...
USER_8675309's user avatar
  • 5,115
87 votes
8 answers
32k views

How to respond to people who overuse punctuation marks?

We all had that one email that contained a phrase similar to these examples: Where are my files?????????? Or: I am not sure this is a good idea!!!!!!!!! I normally want to point out one of the ...
Jordy's user avatar
  • 683
86 votes
13 answers
24k views

What can I do to avoid potential charges for bribery?

I am currently in charge of contracts for my employer. In the recent e-mail to the current holder of the service contract for the company, I casually stated that I wished to have a few Bonsai trees ...
user110370's user avatar
84 votes
9 answers
22k views

Should I reply to urgent emails if I am not fit for work?

Background: I am on sick leave because of my manager: mental issues, specific problem discussed with MD and HR. I am trying to stay away from work-related emails. Meanwhile, I am sick and all my ...
user avatar
83 votes
14 answers
29k views

How to deal with a manager who doesn't read emails and calls you out as incompetent as a result?

So my manager called me out in an email to quite a few stakeholders on a software development project, asking me why I hadn't gotten something done she earlier told me to get done. The thing is, if ...
Jay's user avatar
  • 7,857
82 votes
17 answers
17k views

How should I tell my colleagues that my last name comes first?

As someone from a culture in which the first name comes last and the last name comes first, it was always difficult for me to figure out how to correctly specify my name in an email. For example, say ...
JustOneCupOfCoffee's user avatar
79 votes
5 answers
21k views

Angry email from customer insisting he didn't get a refund [closed]

I run a time management app with a monthly subscription model that gives users the freedom to cancel whenever they feel like so. Normally if a customer cancels at the beginning of the month after they ...
onprofessionalism's user avatar
78 votes
14 answers
22k views

I'm being blamed for not responding to an email from a client that was directly addressed to coworker

I work in development and support for one of my company's products. I'm the only support employee, but there is another person that is above me. He's not technically a support employee, but he's ...
Eddie's user avatar
  • 527
77 votes
8 answers
14k views

Should I bother to reply to emails from recruiters when I'm already employed?

Every now and then I get an email from a recruiter with a position they want to offer me. These emails are normally offering jobs outside my area of expertise and asking for skills I simply don't have....
tupto's user avatar
  • 699
70 votes
5 answers
17k views

How do I tell my boss to not use Comic Sans as their main email typeface?

My boss uses Comic Sans for all of their e-mails. I don't mind it for intra-company communications, but it doesn't strike me as very professional to send out to clients as it doesn't have a very good ...
BDD's user avatar
  • 937
66 votes
6 answers
32k views

Email may have sent twice - is there an etiquette convention for this?

For this question, let's assume I needed to send an important email to a potential customer. Because of a problem with my email client, which rarely happens, two copies of the email are in my Sent ...
David's user avatar
  • 842
61 votes
6 answers
25k views

How should I reply to an email which feels unprofessional after declining a technical interview/test?

I recently got a telephone call regarding a new opportunity. We scheduled a technical Android test completion date on the coming Sunday/Monday. The other party asked me how much I was getting paid ...
vicky's user avatar
  • 1,675
61 votes
10 answers
16k views

How to handle it when someone drags in upper management to get you to solve a problem that they were the source of

So, I ran into an issue today. Generally, when I'm emailing someone to remind them that they've done something incorrectly, I limit the scope to them, their manager1, and my manager. I try to be ...
Sidney's user avatar
  • 4,991
61 votes
11 answers
24k views

I emailed my customer asking multiple questions. Their reply addressed only one. What is the polite way to point this out?

I asked the customer three questions, and they only answered one, as if the others didn't exist. I need answers to all those questions. Frankly, I find it a little rude that they didn't read my email ...
Stephen Collings's user avatar
61 votes
6 answers
13k views

Is there an etiquette for who goes in "CC" and who goes in "To" for emails?

I've noticed some of my colleagues seem to deliberately split up email recipients — some are in the "To" field and some are in the "CC" field. Is this a social cue whereby those CC'd aren't ...
Brendan's user avatar
  • 573
61 votes
6 answers
227k views

What is appropriate email follow-up etiquette after no response?

Sometimes I send emails and need a response. While not quite as bad as not being able to find denvercoder9, it sometimes happens I get no response. This presents a problem if the request is something ...
enderland's user avatar
  • 110k
59 votes
17 answers
17k views

How to get domain experts to answer questions correctly, completely & concisely

I'm a software developer working for a consultancy that undertakes a variety of projects in a variety of domains. Projects typically have a relatively short turnaround (e.g. a few months). I find that ...
Touchdown's user avatar
  • 3,001
58 votes
6 answers
657k views

What should a professional email address look like?

I've been starting a resume recently, and I'm struggling with picking an email. What should a professional email address look like? Will employers look down on me if I have numbers at the end of my ...
yuritsuki's user avatar
  • 1,127
57 votes
10 answers
15k views

Is it strange to ask someone to ask someone else to do something, while CC'd?

Alice is a project manager. Bob is a team lead Chris is a team member. Alice emailed Bob, and CC'd Chris, and said, "Bob, will you please ask Chris to do X??" A few hours later, Alice IM'd Bob ...
John Wu's user avatar
  • 2,958
56 votes
7 answers
20k views

How to respond to an insistent recruiter's cold email?

In receiving a second cold email from a recruiter earlier today, I discovered I had missed the first among my usual sea of emails. The recruiter guilts me in the subject line, writing "I haven't heard ...
ArnoldF's user avatar
  • 613
55 votes
11 answers
8k views

Colleagues routinely only answer the first of my questions?

You send an e-mail with three questions to a colleague. They reply but only answer the first question. The questions are strongly related so you don't want to send three separate e-mails. However you ...
Roger Heathcote's user avatar
55 votes
5 answers
14k views

How should I respond to a (positive) email about my career path that I don't think was supposed to come to me?

Late yesterday I recieved an email, it basically went like this From : My Boss's boss's Boss To: HR Director CC: Jim, Joe, Bob, Sidney HR Directory, The following is my ...
Sidney's user avatar
  • 4,991
52 votes
6 answers
36k views

Need to respond to rude email. How do I do it?

I have been in contact with a supplier for a project. We are the client. Things have been going OK up to a point, then I received a rude and mildly abusive email from one of the people (Bob) I've ...
Puffafish's user avatar
  • 1,229
51 votes
19 answers
24k views

Does a one-line email response from a job seeker show a lack of interest?

A few weeks ago someone with less than 2 years of experience contacted me (via personal connections) asking me to help him find another job. The email cover letter was decent enough, showing his ...
PagMax's user avatar
  • 18.9k
50 votes
5 answers
19k views

Boss not responding to my email about promotion

Last year during my amazing performance review, my boss said he submitted my name to be promoted to a higher officer position but he stated that he missed the cutoff so I’d have to wait until the next ...
Judy Huff's user avatar
  • 529
49 votes
6 answers
31k views

How to politely tell someone they did not hit "reply to all" in an email?

It happens sometimes that somebody (likely) meant to reply all in an email chain, but (likely) accidentally just replied to the last person that sent the email. What is a polite way to inform them of ...
bill999's user avatar
  • 607
49 votes
8 answers
226k views

How does one title a resignation email?

I am in a situation where I need to tell my current employer that I am leaving. This will be the first my manager hears of it; for reasons I don't want to discuss here, we have not had a meeting about ...
user avatar
49 votes
13 answers
16k views

How to convince workplace I'm innocent [closed]

I'm in a bit of a predicament. Last week, an e-mail went out to boss and a few others from my e-mail address. It contained a number of rude remarks and strange insults. Of course, I did NOT send ...
user avatar
49 votes
7 answers
11k views

How appropriate is it to forward interview requests mistakenly sent to me to the right person?

I just received an email from an HR recruiter requesting a phone interview followup for a job application. However I did not apply for the job. The company is reputable and the recruiter has a valid ...
enderland's user avatar
  • 110k
48 votes
12 answers
29k views

I announced my resignation . . . and was completely ignored. What to do?

Background I work as a software engineer (direct hire) for a small B2B SAAS company. Like most of the folks at the company, I work remotely and primarily communicate via Slack, Jira comments, and ...
KapparinoC's user avatar
48 votes
7 answers
15k views

Client wants me to interact with their end-customer, but through client's company email

I develop software and sell licenses to a client in a relationship that is technically non-exclusive but so far has been exclusive in practice i.e. they are an important client to me. My client (let's ...
Museful's user avatar
  • 519
47 votes
10 answers
15k views

Is being blunt in emails common in the workplace?

I'm still a student, but was talking to a friend about how when I email my professors/lecturers they tend to ignore the niceties, the greeting, everything except the main question in my email and send ...
JmJ's user avatar
  • 629
46 votes
11 answers
27k views

Co-Worker Overreacts to Request for Clarification

I received an email from a business user requesting an update of national identifiers for 1150 employees. Being the fairly new guy (I've been with the company for only a year), I looped in the other ...
user avatar
46 votes
6 answers
363k views

How to tell sender they forgot the attachment without embarrassing them?

So I got an email from someone reading "blah blah, X is attached". However the email has no attachments. Obviously they just forgot to attach X before hitting the send button. How should I hint ...
ErlVolton's user avatar
  • 571
44 votes
12 answers
191k views

What's the politest way of writing when you have not received a reply? [duplicate]

Some counter-parties don't reply promptly, and my boss requires paper record like emailing them again e.g. after 7 business days additional to follow-up calls. My boss and I think my writing is very ...
user avatar
44 votes
9 answers
30k views

Replying to a group thread of welcoming me on my 1st day at new remote job

My supervisor started the e-mail thread of welcoming me to the team/department. Several team members has already replied (including the boss of my supervisor so I'm extra nervous) with a brief but ...
googlesheet test's user avatar
42 votes
3 answers
10k views

How to deal with a colleague who consistently schedules meetings that should be emails? [duplicate]

I've got a great team to work in and I absolutely love my job, but one of my colleagues will continually insist on meetings, even/especially after a 'long' email discussion. They're often <= 30 ...
Guus's user avatar
  • 533
42 votes
6 answers
204k views

How do I properly answer a rejection email?

I have recently applied for a job and I have received an email telling me that they had found someone already (so the problem was not my application, but the timing). Things like this happen, you have ...
Alenanno's user avatar
  • 891
41 votes
4 answers
16k views

Potential new partner angry about first collaboration - how to answer email to close up this encounter in a graceful manner

I'm a in-house translator at a company. We sometimes test new freelance translators to help us when we are short of in-house resources. One of our criteria for collaborating is to have the same tool ...
Amu's user avatar
  • 461

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