THEORETICAL POINT

Basic Business Email Structure

1. ADDRESS
➢ To: email address of the recipient
➢ Cc = Carbon copy:
● send the same letter to different people
● every recipient gets to know the email addresses of all the persons that received the
message.
➢ Bcc = Blind carbon copy:
● send the same letter to different people
● the recipient only see his/her own email address.

2. SUBJECT
➢ short, clear, specific, and personalized.
➢ RE means “about/according” in Latin, “reply” in English.

3. BODY
➢ Greetings: informal and simple
● Dear + their position => Ex: Dear Sales Manager, Dear Personnel Manager
● Dear + full name => Ex: Dear Jane Doe, Dear John Doe
● To whom it may concern, To All managers, All … (company’s name) Personnel.
➢ Main Content: clear and condensed
● If the content is too long, send it as attachment.
● There should be 1-3 sentences in a paragraph.

4. CLOSING
➢ Closing message:
● Formal way: Sincerely yours, Your faithfully, Best regards, etc
● Informal way: Yours, As ever, Cheers, Bye for now, etc
➢ Sign-offs:
● [First name] => the simplest way
● [Full name]+ [E-mail] => quite simple
● [Full name]+ [E-mail]+ [address]+ [Phone number]+ [fax number] => relatively detailed
● [Full name]+ [E-mail]+ [position]+ [address]+ [Phone number]+ [fax number] => the
most detailed way

QUICK-SUMMARY CROSSWORD
How to play: Each group take turns to choose one across to answer the equivalent question. One across
will have one letter in red. When all the words are solved then put these red letters in the correct order
to form a keyword. The quickest group who can guess the keyword will be the winner.

Questions:

1. What is the full form of email?

2. An email-writing style you should avoid for your whole email content?
3. What is the ideal business email response time?
4. What does Cc stand for in email?
5. The most important attitude towards the recipients?
6. What is usually short, descriptive and provide the recipient with a reason to open your email?
7. One of the aspects to be noticed when emailing overseas?
8. Fill in the blank: Any recipients on the ... line of an email are not visible to others on the email.

Answer keys:

1. ELECTRONIC MAIL
2. CAPITALIZATION
3. 24 HOURS
4. CARBON COPY
5. RESPECT
6. SUBJECT
7. CULTURE
8. BCC

Keyword: BUSINESS