How to Tag People in an Email
If you are sending an email to multiple people at the same time and you need different people to pay attention to different parts, you should flag each one. Write “@name” for each person or team and make their names in bold. Ideally, put all of these queries on a list so people can find their name to the left.
Coder Lazarus Lazaridis, in his list of five specific techniques for writing better letters, demonstrates how to effectively tag recipients so that everyone is paying attention to what is needed. But even more is happening than he describes.
In several major email applications, including Gmail , Outlook, and Windows Mail , you can turn these tags into links that go to people’s email addresses. If you type @ and start typing a name, the app will suggest people from your contacts and add them to the To: form. (Apple’s mail apps and the Gmail mobile app don’t support this. Gmail does the same with the + sign, a holdover from the already dead Google+.)
Tagging people is useful even if your email app doesn’t do anything special with the tags. This helps people find the information they need quickly.
It will also help you write a clearer email because you are thinking about who needs to hear what. This prevents things from falling between the cracks, because everyone believed that someone else was responsible for the task.
All Lazaridis email tips are top-notch, including:
- Use links to get all external information, instead of forcing people to search
- Use absolute dates whenever you say “tomorrow,” “last Tuesday,” and so on.
- Use subheadings in long emails
They are similar to the Ten Commandments. Read them and you will become as radiant as Moses descending from Mount Sinai.
How to write emails better | iridakos (via Recommendo )