3. Writing formal emails

• Email accounts
• Sending emails
• Saving email addresses
• Subject lines
• Greeting and names
• Body
• Sign off
• Email signature

Email accounts

Keeping your study, work and personal life separate is a good idea. Use your university email when emailing university staff. This will ensure that spam filters don’t block your emails and the recipient can verify who you are. You should use a more formal style than you use for friends.

Use your personal email for your personal communication. If you have a work email, use this for your workplace communication.

Sending emails

When sending emails, use:

• Reply — when only the sender needs to know the information in your email, or your email contains sensitive or personal information.
• Reply all — when all the recipients need to know the information in your email.
• Forward – when you have permission from the sender if you were originally the only person meant to see the email. Remember that others can forward your emails, so don’t write anything that you wouldn’t want others to read.
• To — for those who need to take action or are directly affected by the message.
• Cc (Carbon copy) — if you think someone needs to see this information but they don’t need to take direct action.
• Bcc (Blind carbon copy) — to send an email to a list of people who need the same information but also shouldn’t have their email addresses shown to everyone on the list. Recipients in the To and Cc fields won’t see the Bcc field.

Saving email addresses

You can save email addresses to your contacts in Outlook and other email service providers. This means you can type the start of their name in the “To,” “Cc” or “Bcc” fields, and their email address will appear.

Subject lines

Write a meaningful subject line that describes the content. Include the course code if it is a course-related enquiry.

Greeting and names

You should start your emails with a greeting. Dear is the standard in formal correspondence. Other options include:

• Hi
• Hello
• Good morning
• Good afternoon

After your greeting, address the recipient using their appropriate title (e.g. Professor, Dr) unless you have been invited to call them by their first name. If you don’t know their title, put their full name (e.g. Dear Jordan Smith).

Find out the name of the contact person if you can. Otherwise, use the service or department name (e.g. Dear UQ Library). Avoid using To Whom it May Concern. It can seem too formal or as though you haven’t bothered to find the correct contact person.

Body

Get to the point quickly. Lead with the most important information or a request, then follow up with the explanation or background.

Sign off

Sign off with a standard closing. Examples include:

• Kind regards
• Sincerely
• Thank you

Let us know what you like to use in the following form! The form is set to anonymous. We will get your response data but we won’t know who has submitted it.
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Email signature

After your sign off, include an email signature so the recipient can easily identify and contact you. This should contain your:

• name
• student number
• contact details (mobile number).

Do not include any private information.

Attachments

Check that you have attached the correct file and provided the correct link.