A few simple email etiquette rules that will help you handle many situations well

Whatever your line of business, a good part of the communication between companies happens over email. Whether you’re sending invoices, placing orders or discussing things internally with colleagues, email is almost always involved.

In this article, we’ll present a few simple rules for working with email.

Fill in the subject line

Don’t send emails without a subject, or you risk the message landing straight in the Spam folder. Also, don’t put the entire content of the message in the subject. This field should contain the main idea of the email.

People who deal with a large volume of email tend to put off reading emails with no subject or with irrelevant subjects.

Don’t forget greetings

Every email should start with a greeting and end with one. Treat this kind of communication as if the person you’re writing to were standing in front of you. Show them respect.

Format your email so it’s easy to read

If you’re writing a longer email, remember to break it into paragraphs. Nothing is more unpleasant than forcing the people who receive your message to read large blocks of text.

A well-structured email helps the other person understand the message more easily and more quickly.

Don’t write in all caps

EMAILS WRITTEN IN CAPS LOCK IRRITATE READERS!!!!

Don’t write your messages in all capital letters if you don’t want to be ignored. The person who receives your email will most likely feel annoyed or threatened, and we doubt that’s what you want.

Don’t use emoticons or emoji in formal emails

Another mistake we’ve noticed often is the use of emoticons or emoji in formal emails. Save them for friendly messages to people you already know.

Mind your grammar

A missing letter or hyphen can seriously undermine the authority of your message and put you in a bad light. Reread your email before sending it to make sure it’s written correctly.

Don’t write emails when you’re angry

Avoid writing emails when you’re angry at all costs, because you risk getting your message across in a tense way. Whatever the purpose of the message, you need to come across as reasonable, not irritable.

Reply promptly to emails that don’t involve making decisions

If it takes you a minute to reply to an email, don’t put it off. That kind of hesitation can cost you much more time later.

What other etiquette rules matter in 2026?

Besides tone and form, today it matters just as much who you write to, what you attach and how secure the message is:

• Use the To, Cc and Bcc fields correctly. The main recipient goes in To, and in Cc you put only the people who need to be kept informed. When you write to several people outside the company who don’t know each other, use Bcc: email addresses are personal data, and exposing them can breach the GDPR.
• Don’t overuse “Reply all.” Reply to everyone only if the information concerns all the recipients.
• Send links instead of large attachments. Share large files through OneDrive, SharePoint or Google Drive, with access only for the recipients. See also how to transfer large files over the internet.
• Use a complete, consistent signature: name, job title, company, phone and website, the same for all colleagues. We wrote about centrally managed signatures in the article on email signature marketing in Microsoft 365.
• Set up an automatic reply when you’re away, with the date you’ll be back and the person covering for you.
• Reread texts written with the help of artificial intelligence too. Assistants such as Copilot or Gemini help you draft faster, but you remain responsible for the tone, figures and names.

How do you make sure your email doesn’t end up in Spam?

Besides a clear subject line, what matters most is how the company’s domain is configured: SPF, DKIM and DMARC records prove to the receiving servers that the message really comes from you. Since February 2024, Gmail and Yahoo have required these settings, especially from senders who send large volumes of messages. Also avoid subject lines written in all caps, with lots of exclamation marks or with advertising language, which spam filters penalize.

What do you do when an email seems to come from a partner but doesn’t?

If an email urgently asks you for a payment, a change to a supplier’s bank account or login details, verify the request by phone, at a number you already have, not the one in the message. Attackers are getting better and better at imitating the style of partners and colleagues. See how to check whether an email is spam and 3 simple security rules for working with email.

RezolvIT is an IT outsourcing company that places great value on following security rules and uses innovative solutions to strengthen the security of the companies it works with.