Addressing and greeting in email

This guide tries to find a common consensus regarding addressing and greeting in emails: who to address, how to use the 'To' and 'CC' fields, and how to greet the recipients.

The goal is to eliminate ambiguity and provide just enough information, without being unpolite.

These guidelines are in English and for English mails, but should be largely transferable to other languages and cultures. This is very welcomed as a community effort.

Notes on terminology

• Mail and email are used interchangeably. I think it's important to use email in the title and introduction to avoid confusion and help in SEO, but after this, mail is of course just as clear.
• Addressee and recipient are used interchangeably in this context.

Determining recipients

Before sending a mail, always first carefully think about who the recipients should be. This usually solves most of the possible problems and ambiguity. Generally, a mail should only be sent to a single person; or as few people as possible.

General rule

Address whom you expect an action or response from

If you ask an action to multiple recipients, it's confusing because they might expect from each other that the other person will do it. They are also never sure that if the other person executed the action, he or she will notify everyone (reply-all), nor whether or not they already started. Therefore, even though you know that multiple persons could do the job, it might be better to address only one person, and ask him or her to maybe check with, or delegate to, another person. You may want to politely ask whether your addressee is the right person for the job; and add that he/she is free to delegate if not.

Responding to a question is in fact also 'an action', and so should also only be directed to one person in particular.

Actions or responses from multiple people

Sometimes, you'll want to combine multiple requests around the same topic in one mail. Only do this in case you're sure that all of the recipients are interested in all of the info in the mail - otherwise it might be more polite to split it up: that way you don't force people to read texts which they're not interested in, and you avoid people skipping the mail because it's too long.

That being said, in some cases it is possibly more efficient to address two or even more people in one mail. We'll talk about how to address them properly further down.

Informational group mails

Mails that do not require a response or action are typically informational mails. Often, you want to send these to a specific group (a mailing - or subscribers list, a company department). Further down, we'll see how to specifically address such mails properly. Don't just add a lot of people to the 'to' field!

To and CC fields

The main rule is extremely simple:

Only put the person you expect an action from in the 'to' field

A recipient of an email should know whether an action or response is expected from him or her just by looking at whether he or she appears in the 'to' field (and is addressed in the mail body).

Use the 'CC' field for other people who you know are interested

Put anyone who you know will be interested in the mail, but you don't expect an action from per se, in 'CC'.

When replying, review and change 'to' and 'CC' if necessary

Don't just let these fields grow and flood dozens of people with mail chains they're probably not interested in.

• Move any additional people who were in the 'to' field to 'CC'; unless you still expect an additional action from them (e.g. a confirmation). In that case, address them in the body too. Generally, you only want to leave the person who sent you the mail in the 'to' field.
• Remove people from the 'CC' field when you know they will not or no longer be interested.

Greeting recipients

Formal vs informal, initial vs recurring contact

There are several differences between formal and informal mails, and whether it's the first time you contact someone whom you don't know or recurring contact. Furthermore, rules about formality will vary largely between cultures.

It's beyond the scope of this guide to exhaustively list and discuss various greetings and salutations. Please refer to other sources when in doubt, there are plenty of other sites who focus on this. In formal communication, you can typically closely follow the rules used for traditional (paper) mail. Please refer to for business-specific salutations in email.

Certainly in a formal context, whenever making initial contact, use the proper salutation. When the correspondent closes his or her email in a formal way, keep on addressing them formally.

In the below examples I only use the first name, which is probably the most common scenario in most companies and between known business contacts.

Normal mails

One recipient, one action

In most cases, you'll have only one recipient and the mail will only talk about one subject. Just address the person right before you ask your question.

John,

Could you have a look at this issue and find a solution?

Multiple recipients, no common introduction

Occasionally, it's better to address multiple people in one mail on a single subject. Typically, just address the person right before you ask him or her a question.

John,

Could you process the attached list?

James,

This is what we talked about on the phone. You needn't look into this any further.

Multiple recipients, common introduction

Sometimes, typically in large mail conversations (maybe other media or a meeting would be better suited to tackle the issue, to avoid cross-posts?), you might want to start off addressing multiple recipients at once. You might want to then direct specific requests or questions towards any one of them.

John, James, William,

I'm afraid the matter is more complicated than that. I suggest we schedule a meeting to further discuss this.

James, regarding your last remark: I'm already on it. I'll brief you further as soon as I have more information.

If there were more people involved in the conversation, move anyone who was not actively participating, but you expect to still be interested, to the 'CC' field and no longer greet them personally.

Short responses in a mail conversation

When sending short or multiple replies in a mail conversation (maybe chat would be a more suited medium?), it's ok to leave off the greeting completely and start your mail with the message itself.

No problem, I'm already on it!

Group mails

When you notice that you need to send your mail to multiple recipients and it just contains information (or requires everyone to perform a certain action), you might want to direct it to this entire group. Here are some common use cases:

• Mailing lists
• Subscribers to a newsletter
• Informational mails for your company or your company's department

If you are able to programatically send a personalized mail, greet the person directly, using your company culture's salutation. If not, you can probably just leave off a greeting entirely, and just commence your message; as if it was an article (maybe it should be, too?).

Mails to special mailboxes

Another special case is when you send a mail to a special mailbox - either a company's general mail address, the group mailbox of a department at your company, a helpdesk,... You can typically expect that your mail will be converted into an issue and assigned to someone who will pick it up further.

In these cases, just use a formal salutation.

Contributing

• For discussing any of these guidelines, please create an issue. If possible use examples and/or references.
• Corrections of language errors and typos are very welcome through pull requests! I'm not a native English speaker so please excuse me if there are any...