Common Email Phrases to Replace
We recently wrote a post on ways to sound more confident at work. We thought we’d expand more upon that and focus specifically on emailing and simple phrases you can replace to sound more confident, to the point, and allow less room for misinterpretation (which is a common complaint about some email messages). Here are our suggestions for ways to reframe common email phrases.
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Instead of saying this |
Try this |
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I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you I look forward to your thoughts Sorry to bother you with this Just wanted to follow up Shoot! Sorry I didn’t catch that Per my last email Let’s touch base You should I don’t know Is that ok? |
Thank you so much for your patience I value your input Thank you for your time What is the status on... Thanks for letting me know Are you able to let me know about this by… Are you available on Friday to chat? I’d recommend… Allow me to get back to you on that Let me know if you have a different opinion |
In addition to the suggestions above, some other ways to improve your communication via email are to remove hedge words. Hedge words are what we add to our sentences to soften our words and can make us sound less confident and sure of ourselves. Some examples of hedge words include: may, possibly, nearly, might, perhaps, etc. While there is a time and a place to be tentative with your words, usually you’ll want to nix such words to come across sure of yourself and what you are presenting. When it comes to email, it’s best to remove the fluff and get straight to the point.