Communicating Tone in the Email: Easier Said Than Done

 Vol 1, No 3, September 6, 2023.

"A good speech should be like a woman's skirt: long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest," according to Sir Winston S. Churchill.

A responsible lady would like to appear at a function tastefully dressed without going overboard. On the other hand, she wouldn't want to "go to the bull's market on a donkey." Above are captivating visual metaphors many writers deploy to achieve meaning and understanding. Visual metaphors are also enablers of tone in writing. However, they need to be more suitable for business communication because they distract from the message.

So, the big question is, how do you ensure your email hits the bull's eye? How do you ensure it is like the lady's miniskirt—long enough to cover the subject and short enough to create interest? How do you guarantee it covers the subject matter tastefully without distracting the recipient like a severely short and eye-popping miniskirt?

Today, we examine how to control the tone of voice in email communication.

Do you recall the last time you had a difficult discussion with your boss? Being a critical interpersonal discussion and one that could make or mar your career, do you remember how you prepared for this nerve-racking discussion as the countdown to zero-hour approached? Perhaps you had a sick child, or your spouse of over 15 years suddenly started 'acting out' (as humans are programmed to because the Homosapien is still a work-in-progress), which explains why you were late to work for the week.

Elif Shafak, in The Forty Rules of Love (March 1, 2009), says,

"Every human being is a work in progress but inexorably moving toward perfection. We are each an unfinished work of art, waiting and striving to be completed."

Your ability to control your tone of voice in that discussion will determine how your boss appreciates your reasons for being habitually late to the office in the last five days. Over the years, through childhood and adolescence, we learned how to bow our heads to show we are truly sorry when we're found wanting. We also learned to speak slowly with trepidation and choose words carefully to demonstrate respect and remorse. You do these things not to exacerbate an already bad situation.

But what about when you're writing an email to the no-nonsense, straight-shooting CEO to explain the circumstances that led to finishing the presentation to shareholders three hours behind schedule? Or writing a cold-sales message to a stranger 5,606 kilometers away on another continent? How do you convey tone, warmth, friendliness, and enthusiasm?

How do you communicate tone in an email message?

There are several ways, but they require learning and practice to achieve. Let's critically but briefly examine four ways you can communicate tone effectively.

1.      First, the same way you depend on paralanguage in speech when you address your team members and amplify your speech's volume, speed, and intonation is how you apply paralanguage in writing. If effective communication is not only about what you say but also how you say it, then be careful about how you write that email to your boss. Choose your words carefully; check and cross-check their written and conversational meanings.

2.      Second, write with the reader in mind. As you do in speech in an interpersonal communication event, write with empathy, pretend to be the reader, and feel how she might feel when she reads your mail. You may begin your email with words of affirmation as if you were in an interpersonal communication situation. You know, in the same way, you say, "How are you this morning, Jane?" You could begin as follows.

"You must be relieved, Frank, at getting a solution to the problem plaguing the Gen Z target market after three years." From the tone of this sentence, the manager who is writing to the CEO opens the email with a positive affirmation to get the attention of his boss. Never mind that the line manager may be the one who solved the problem—who did all the spadework. This approach—positive affirmation—demonstrates empathy tastefully and diplomatically.

A word of caution: never start an official email with an opening remark like, "How was your night, sir?" Your boss isn't family, so don't go there or patronize him. Don't you dare ask him about his exuberant, playful, six-foot-tall dog, Manny?

He will see through your bare-faced flattery.

3.      Third, just as impactful teachers use repetition as an effective tool to achieve shared meaning and shared understanding, deploy repetition perceptively to avoid being misunderstood in your business emails. Could you paraphrase that critical point you're communicating to your boss to ensure you clear doubts about being misunderstood? Lawyers are experts at repetition and paraphrasing when they write documents.

Finally, embrace and employ conjunctions, the same way the lady attending a function may not wear an extreme miniskirt but will ensure the buttons on her dress match the color scheme of her frock and accessories. By doing so, she provides harmony between her dress buttons and accessories. In this vein, please go the extra mile to ensure that your sentences and paragraphs are linked and that the email flows smoothly from one sentence to the next and from one section to another.

Before we go, a universal challenge with business emails is the temptation for busy executives to finish quickly and go to “other, more critical work." Remember that a poorly written email with factual errors, misrepresentations, and mischaracterizations can land you in big trouble. It was rushing to finish an email that led to a top executive sending inappropriate sexually related adult material to his boss. Your guess is as good as mine as to what became of him.

Don't let this be your lot. Don't forget to edit that business email carefully; be 100 percent sure you're sending it to the right person before pressing that ever-tempting ‘send’ button.

Next week, I expect to discuss the last of the email series, How to Write a Life-changing Email to a Hostile Audience.

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