The email below was sent by a student from a particular department in the Faulty of Engineering to a Management Assistance Officer in the Office of External Relations of the same faculty regarding students helpers for the open house.
__________________________________________________________
From: Alicia Tan
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 8:42 AM
To: John Lee
Cc: Paul Koh; Shawn Lim; Clara Cho
Subject: Students helping for open house
Dear John,
Here are 4 people that can help out at the open house and their respective details. In summary, its 3 people on Sat, 2 on Sun. Do refer to details below on their available time slots.
Do let us know if you require us to attend any briefing sessions, when to collect the T-shirts and any other details. I've cc them this email as well, so you can easily reply to all of us.
Thank you very much.
Regards,
Alicia Tan
__________________________________________________________
Firstly, Alicia should have included her department in the subject title as the reader is a Management Assistance Officer in the Office of External Relations in the Faulty of Engineering and is most probably in charge of more than one department of students. By doing so, the reader would be able to immediately identify that these students would be helping out with that particular department’s booth and not wait to read the entire email before figuring it out.
The salutation used in this case seemed to be inappropriate as John was not a friend but someone Alicia was collaborating with. She should have addressed him as Mr Lee.
The overall content of the email was concise and complete except for some grammatical errors such as “Here are 4 people that can help out…” which should be “Here are 4 people who can help out…” and “In summary, its 3 people on…” which should be “In summary, there are 3 people on...”
Finally, she could have signed off with the department and faculty she was from instead of just stating her name, which may not bear much significance to the reader. Also, it would be useful for the reader as she did not mention her department in the subject title.
The email could have looked like:
__________________________________________________________
From: Alicia Tan
Sent: Tuesday, February 10, 2009 8:42 AM
To: John Lee
Cc: Paul Koh; Shawn Lim; Clara Cho
Subject: Students Helpers for Open House (MSE department)
Dear Mr Lee,
There are 4 student helpers for the open house and their respective details have been listed below. There will be 3 helpers on Saturday and 2 helpers on Sunday. Please refer to their details below on their available time slots.
Kindly let us know if we are required to attend any briefing sessions or if there are any further instructions.
Thank you very much.
Regards,
Alicia Tan
Material Science & Engineering
Faculty of Engineering
__________________________________________________________
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Hi Wan Yu,
ReplyDeleteI do agree with your comments regarding the email and the way you edited it. In my opinion, the tone of the first email was quite informal and you managed to rectify it in your edited version. However, there is something I would like to ask you. The email was sent to "John Lee" but why was the salutation addressed to Frederick and Mr Yap instead? Is it possible that you forgot to change the names? Other than that, I think the critique was quite well written. :)
ws
Hi Wan Yu,
ReplyDeleteYou have done a pretty good crtitique and even went one step further to propose a better email. However, you have not tell the reader explicitly what to do if he has any enquiries in the closing. The original email indicated that the reader can contact the people involved in the open house through email. Providing channels for the reader to communicate (should he have enquiries) helps to make the email more complete. :)
evelia
This is an excellent post, Wan Yu, with a fine analysis and a much improved alternative mail. Perhaps Evelia is correct though in her additional suggestion.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your hard work!
Oh no Wee Siong! You are totally right -- I forgot to change the salutation in the email!! Thanks for pointing it out. I have rectified it! (:
ReplyDeleteHey Evelia!
ReplyDeleteI have thought about that too when I was analysing the email, but I managed to convince myself that it was just up to John to choose whether to contact the students via email or even calling them up since all their details were given (I left out the details as its quite meaningless to xxxxx everything!). Also, I thought John would have emailed the students since they have been cc-ed the email and he can easily connect the names that the email was cc-ed to, to the names of the students given in the details. He won't even need to type the email addresses himself but simply click on "Reply All". Moreover, he would probably need to communicate with more than one department of students, making the email a sensible and much more efficient way of information distribution. That was how I concluded that the last sentence in the original email (on how to contact the students) was redundant.
But I certainly see where you are coming from as I have spent some time thinking about it as well! And I may be wrong by taking it for granted that John should know better. Just wanted to share my reasonings for leaving that out! Thanks for taking the time to read my post and sharing your thoughts with me! (:
Cheers!
Hi Wan Yu,
ReplyDeleteI think you did a great job in analyzing and rewriting the mail. However, I think that you could have included that exact dates and specific contact numbers or email address for the recipient in the letter for clarity since you mention “Kindly let us know”. Other than that I think its fine.
Ayu
Hello Ayu!
ReplyDeleteAs mentioned in my reply to Evelia, I have left out the students' details that was originally at the end of the email (after the signature) as it was quite meaningless to substitute everything with XXX. I am sorry if that may have caused some misunderstanding! (:
However, I do agree that exact dates could have been included to make the entire email more complete. Thanks for the reminder! :D
Hey Freakydolls,
ReplyDeleteGreat interaction here!
Now I have one more comment.
Actually, when you are writing, it is advisable to spell out the numbers zero through ten. Numbers 11 and higher can be presented numerically.
BB
Hey Brad!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the reminder! You would be glad to see in my following post on Evaluating Intercultural Behaviour that I have written nine as "nine" and fifteen as "15".
Cheers! (: