Wait! Don't Hit Send Yet!

It has happened to many people, presidents, movie stars, even me: Sending a regrettable email message that never should have been sent. For any email message -- whether a one-off, memo-type message or bulk email campaign -- you need to think twice before you hit send. Here's a quick pre-send checklist:

Carefully compose your email message
The email message you write may be a fresh composition, or it may be in response to an email message you received. Regardless, care should be taken before you shoot off a message. Third party review is recommended. Even if the message to which you are responding is fraught with typographical errors and terrible grammar, your response should follow the rules. This will not only impress the recipient, it puts you above reproach syntactically. If your reply is as sloppy as the original, you'll stoop to their grammatical level.

Read it aloud
Once you've finished the message, read it aloud. Written messages cannot effectively communicate non-verbal cues, but recipients are great at inferring negative cues. By reading the message aloud to yourself, you might be able to identify some areas where people may misunderstand you. Reviewing the email message will give you a chance to make your ideas more clear. Ensuring your "tone" is friendly can prevent the eruption of a flame war.

Wait before sending
Depending on the importance of the email message you compose, wait before sending it. If you wrote it in the heat of passion, wait for a full day before sending. Hopefully, that much time will get you back on track and thinking logically again. You can always delete the message and start over once you've cooled off. If the message is less important, walk away for a few minutes to an hour and come back to it before you send. Sometimes composing an emotionally charged email saps a lot out of you and looking at it again with fresh eyes can help you make improvements.

Read it again
Once you freshen it up, read it again to make sure it still makes sense. Sometimes just a portion of the message required changing, but those changes may not flow properly with the unchanged portions. Reading it one last time will help prevent you from sending something you might regret.

More companies are subject to saving all written electronic data. Make sure the messages you compose are not goofy, stupid, or downright detrimental to the way you do business. Email messages are not subject to the same editing and review processes imposed on other business documents. Make sure that you don't say something that is going to cost your company their reputation, and you your job. -- Arial Software

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