In this Email Tune-up lesson, we’re looking at an email from Jimmy, who is the training officer for his company. Jimmy wants to notify the various department heads of an upcoming seminar their staff will be attending. This is an internal email, which usually means it’s a bit more informal than something being sent outside the company. However, it’s being sent to managers at a higher rank than Jimmy’s, so the tone must be respectful and not too informal.
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I’s very good, I’m Italian and I don’t speak a good English but I understood it very well.
ET-06 has helped me a lot to understand the better way to write a mail on business. But I’m still confuse on how I can make a email formal/informal and decisive/tentative. I wonder if you can help me to explaint more about modal verbs/words in order to understand how I can be more or less polite and change the tone on a email.
@ Alejandro,
You raise an excellent point: How to vary the tone in English? As you mention, the use of modals verbs is key to varying tone but there are also other techniques that come into play. I think this is a topic we need to look at in detail for both written and spoken English, so expect to see some lessons on tone in the new year.
Is it right to address to “department heads” or would it be better or also possible to write “heads of department”?
@Rapsak,
If you’re referring to the salutation (greeting), I would use “Department Heads”.
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I appreciate your assistance on this lecture.
I assume that the tone of e-mail on this business environment is very important.
I am looking forward to your more real business english lecture.
Thanks.
Brilliant! Seriously, it really helped me a lot–maybe the best one of the Tune-Ups. Thank you so much!!!!
very helpful. thanks.
I am looking forward to seeing complete course for professional business English writing essentials on BEP
at the most convenient time
best regards