In their day to day, librarians and lawyers need to tailor their writing to fit various contexts and audiences. Web content, academic scholarship, and work emails all require different writing styles and levels of formality, but the undergirding principles of effective written communication are the same. Effective writing has brevity, clarity, and the correct tone. While these principles are emphasized in formal writing, they are sometimes overlooked with less formal communications such as workplace email messages. However, email are vital modes of communication and many resources exist to help lawyers and librarians refine their written communication skills.
Editing Tools
Before sending an email, one can copy and paste the text into an online writing and grammar editing tool, such as Grammarly. As seen below, Grammarly’s free version checks for correctness, clarity, engagement, and delivery. More advanced writing features, such as tone suggestions, are available with Grammarly Premium.
Grammarly also has a free plugin for Google Chrome that will edit emails in the browser directly. Tools similar to Grammarly include:
- Hemingway Editor: Free online tool for quick grammar assessment and to rate reading level.
- Usability.gov: leading resource for user experience (UX) best practices and guidelines, managed by the Digital.gov team in the General Services Administration (GSA) Technology Transformation Service.
- Purdue Online Writing Lab: Workplace Writers: compendium of resources on workplace writing, from seeking employment to effective communication on the job.
- Plain Language Action and Information Network: Resources: links to books, articles, and other resources on the value of writing with plain language and how to do so.
Grammarly Google Chrome Plugin.
Strategies for Improving Emails
Lawyers and librarians may also benefit from resources targeted at improving the content of emails, as well as those that offer tips on using email more effectively. Some tips include:
- The time of day, even the day of the week, can make a difference whether someone responds or even reads your email.
- You can send an email at a targeted time, such as at the start of the workday or right after the lunch hour when people are most likely to be checking their email. Note that sending an email at a scheduled time may delay the email until you open your email client.
The Harvard Business Review published “The Essential Guide to Crafting a Work Email” that discusses email etiquette.
Some tips include:
- Use proper capitalization and punctuation.
- Use emojis sparingly, unless there is a context where they are appropriate (such as mimicking the recipient’s writing style).
- Break up paragraphs.
- The number of revisions an email should have depends on how many recipients there are.
- 1 to 5 recipients: 2 to 4 revisions
- 5 to 10 recipients: 8 to 12 revisions
- Company-wide or to executive committee (or analogous bodies): 30 to 50 revisions
Additional Resources
For further reading, lawyers and librarians can visit the following resources for inspiration and guidance:
- McDonald, Courtney, and Heidi Burkhardt. “Library-Authored Web Content and the Need for Content Strategy.” Information Technology and Libraries 38.3 (2019): 8–21. Web. https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ital/article/view/11015
- Harmon S. How to make sure your emails give the right impression. Harvard Business Review, February 6, 2017. https://hbr.org/2017/02/how-to-make-sure-your-emails-give-the-right-impression (note: HBR offers a limited number of free articles per month)
- McDonald, Courtney, and Heidi Burkhardt. “Library-Authored Web Content and the Need for Content Strategy.” Information Technology and Libraries 38.3 (2019): 8–21. Web. https://ejournals.bc.edu/index.php/ital/article/view/11015
Written by: Aaisha M. Sanaullah, L’22, Richmond School of Law
NOTE: The VALL Spring 2021 meeting, held on May 13, focused topics of communications and data in law libraries. In breakout rooms, participants explored these topics in four separate sessions. For the benefit of VALL members and others, we're publishing meeting materials in a series of blog posts.
- Roger V. Skalbeck, VALL President, 2021-2022
