Email has changed a lot for people since it became an acceptable form of everyday communication. What once took days to arrive to some people can now be gotten in a matter of seconds. However, with these sweeping changes in technology, what has fallen by the wayside is the grammar department. There was a sense of pride and sophistication in writing a letter. There was a right way and a wrong way to compose one. These days there is a lack of proper grammar that is evident when it comes to the way that so many people compose their emails.
Of course this isn’t to mean that an email should be composed just as a letter would, but it should signal that there is a difference in the types of emails one composes. When talking to a friend, and someone the sender is very familiar with, there is no reason to think that they can’t be informal. This means they don’t need a greeting, or rather that the greeting can be put into the subject line. However, there should still be a premium on writing complete sentences. There should also be an emphasis on not writing fragment emails. With the advancements of texting and instant messaging, there is no need to clutter email inboxes with a flood of emails that are just a sentence or two.
Of course the emphasis on writing proper emails is essential when writing a business email. Many times these tend to come off informal, giving the recipient the idea that there are a number of people out there that give out business emails that are informal and contain bad grammar. Nothing will turn off, or water down, a point better than a poorly worded email. Business emails should follow all the rules of grammar, including but not limited to, greetings, complete sentences, properly signed endings, and correct spacing. These rules are important even in emails.