When you’re writing an email, you really don’t want to look like an idiot. You’re not expected to write like you got your English degree from Yale to make people think you’re smart, but you sure don’t want to write like you got your GED while incarcerated at Green Haven. Generally, in a business, people don’t mind minor grammatical errors like tense changes, missing commas, or disagreeing pronouns, but they do expect a certain degree of professionalism or they won’t take it seriously. It doesn’t take a genius to write a good letter; emails should be no different.
One of the worst practices is not capitalizing “i” and abbreviating it inappropriately.
Nothing annoys me more than when I see a phrase like “wut ru up 2?” or “I have your face”. This type of abbreviation can be useful when you’re giving instructions to your Battlefield 1942 team, in the middle of an intense World of Warcraft raid, or trying to type while eating a sandwich, but it has no place in a professional email. Is it so hard to press the Shift key? If you don’t take the time to carefully craft emails, I can only assume you don’t have anything helpful to say. It’s not like you’re paying for bandwidth anymore, don’t be stingy with lyrics.
I can understand why people use this kind of language on cell phones. At ten cents each, text messages are exorbitantly expensive. Making the most of that character limit can save you a great deal of money, at the expense of your dignity. However, emails do not suffer from the same restrictions.
The rule here is, when writing a professional email, never use shorthand. Unless you are on the court reporters’ society mailing list, the recipient will appreciate your completeness. Also, always capitalize the letter “i” when referring to yourself.
If your email appears to come from a high school student, it goes to the trash can along with the attached resume. Your Burger King management experience and Ph.D. from the University of Phoenix online won’t mean you’re squatting if I can’t read your email. If you can’t take the time to write a professional email, you can’t expect anyone to read it.