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Write Formal Emails in English

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The format of a formal email in English

From / to / cc / bcc

Subject

Remember to have a concise and eye-catching subject so your email won’t get missed. DON’T send an email without a subject.

Greeting

  • For the Germans and the English, use Dear xxx
  • For the Americans, use Hi and Hello directly.
    • Hi Bob,
    • Hi team,

Body

  • Introduction
  • Body of the text
  • Conclusion

Closing

  • Thanks, / thank you,

    More casual and friendly in tone. Used when you’re asking for something.

  • Regards, / Best regards,

    More professional. Better to use when close an informational note.

  • Yours,

  • Sincerely, / Yours sincerely,

  • best,

  • take care,

  • cheers,

  • talk soon,

Signature

Di Lin,
MetaOS team, DevDiv China

Useful Abbreviation

  • ASAP: As soon as possible
  • FYI: For your information
  • OOF: Out-of-office
  • WFH: Work from home
  • TL’DR: Too long, don’t read
  • LGTM: Look good to me
  • TBD: To be done, to be decided

Example

Subject: vscode-iot-workbench v0.1.15 has been released

Hi team,

The latest vscode-iot-workbench v0.1.15 has just been released with all tests passed. For more details please see xxx. Thanks!

Regards,

Di Lin,
MetaOS team, DevDiv China

Email Samples on Different Topics

Discussion

  • Please see my comment in line.

  • When other team member raise another suggestion or solution you disagree, instead of arguing he’s wrong, you can try to agree on his solution first with sincere example. Then raise your solution, talk about the difference between them and come out with a conclusion with category.

    We agree that xxx is a good choice / idea when xxx. And it is perfect to do xxx. For example, xxx. This will xxx and will be a good choice.
    But for this scenario xxx, it is more clean to just do xxx.
    So to summerize, we would like to separate the two scenarios: 1. xxx. 2. xxx.

  • During discussion email thread process, remember to occassionly thank the people discussing with you. This can ease the discussion tense and remind people that you are discussing to improve the product and not mean to aim anyone.

    Thanks @people for lots of suggestions, especially the xxx. The suggestion really helps to understand and re-think more about the design of xxx.

  • Need more info.

    Thanks for the suggestions. Can you share more about the thoughts behind following ideas? Knowing the improvements we want to achieve with the ideas would be very helpful for us on detailed design. I also attached some technical details that may bring impact to the expected improvements.

  • Do you want to collect all the concerns and open issues, and then we can schedule a meeting to resolve them?

  • You mentioned other architectural concerns. Let’s get them on the table. Have you written them down somewhere? Happy to review.

  • On the flip side, sharing credentials is considered an anti-pattern.

  • Share the current status of your process. What your team has decided and been working on.

    To summarize current status: the xxx idea is great and we agree that we do sth. We’re actively working on the SDK design, and will share more details with sample code in next review meeting.

    Thanks for the feedback and I’d like to share our updates and ideas to discuss.
    Updated items: 

      1.   
  2.

    Need further discussion: 

      1.   
  2.

  • Ask other team for technical advice.

    There’re some technical considerations and best practices that impacts our design. For example, xxx. This impacts the design of xxx. In the meanwhile, the existing xxx also follows similar practices. I’m not able to share all the considerations in the thread and apologize for the confusions caused.

  • Greet new member join to discuss.

    Hi xxx, Glad to talk with you. To provide some background, we’re working on the xxx.
    I recommend we sit down with Bob who is the architect of xxx. I’ll brief him on the situation tomorrow and then set up a call with him so we can get the right design.
    Thank you very much, Alan. Looking forward to talk with you and Bob.

  • Sync the release plan with other team. Call out if there is any concern so you don’t get blocked by other team.

    Can you share the release plan of the xxx support? That would be very helpful to our planning. And for the coding experience, we currently would like to have xxx (techinical details). If you have the same scenario implementation, please also share with us.

  • Can you please articulate(明确说明) why specifically the xxx interface is not suitable for an xxx flow?
    Can you please articulate the release plans for the xxx, and point us to the design doc and/or code in progress if possible?

  • Please have a look at the docs and feel free to let us know if further meeting needed or we could close it offline.

  • I left a couple of additional comments for thought. I think we are really close now.

Project Trantision

When you are on a product transition process with other team, communication counts. This process usually includes cross-team communication and it is vital for your career reputation.

Farewell

Dear friends and colleagues,

As some of you know, I’m going to move on to a different role outside of <company-name>, and my last day is Friday, August 30th. I’m a fan of <company-name> since I was 22 years old, and enjoying my job here after joined in <company-name> 5 years ago. So this is really a hard decision to me in this summer, I think the decision is in the best choice of my career goals and personal interesting, or it’s called ‘follow my heart’.

5-years is not a short period in a person’s life, but how lucky I am is joining this team and working with you guys! It’s really an incredible wonderful journey in my life! Learn and grow, enjoy everything here, and make a lot of good friends. So thank you everyone, it’s been so great working with you!

It’s no goodbye but see you around, keep in touch!

Sincerely,
xxx

Hi,

Today is my last day working in <department-name>. I will soon start another role in <another-department-name>, to continue to explore the IoT territory.

It was still vivid to me the days and nights, smiles and tears we have been working on the <project-A>, <project-B>, <project-C> and all the products. Also I witness the growth of <department-name> that now we have multiple charts there. I was so thrilled to be part of this team. Thanks to all of you!

Specially thanks to Bob my manager, who provided numerous helps and guides to me during the past 3.5 years, to shape me up as a good PM for the domain I worked. I learned a lot from you and pretty sure it will benefit for my next endeavor.

I am still in the xxx domain, and we will also have lots of cross paths and collaborations in the near future. Looking forward to it.

Thanks,
xxx

Dear all,

As some of you may know, I am leaving <company-name> and today is my last working day.
I started my career in <company-name> back from Mar 2010 and it is 10 years already. It is still vivid to me all the days and nights, smiles and tears we have gone through along the way, from <project-A> to <project-B>. I felt so lucky when getting offer from <company-name> in 2009, and I still feel the same today.

Special thanks to my manager Alen and all SLTs, who give me all the opportunities in <department-name>, support me for the various decisions we have made, and encourage me to try something new. I’d like to say thank you to our PM team, especially Bob as well. We know each other for long time and started working together for several years. I really enjoy working with you and your team on various projects over the years. And thanks to all precious managers: Andrew, Eric, Tom and Mike. I cannot achieve so much without your help and guidance.

I also want to say THANK YOU to all my current & previous colleagues, and partner teams. It is a great journey working with you over the years. It’s the lifetime memory to me.

Mobile and Wechat: xxxxxxxxxxx
Personal mail: xxx@outlook.com
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/xxx/

xxx
<department-name>

Hi friends,

Some of you may already know that I’ll explore new adventures outside <company-name> from next week. Today is my last day at <company-name>.

I joined <company-name> after graduation in 2016. It’s my pleasure to start my career path from such a big company with many creative products. It’s also my fortune to work with so many talented teams and guys. Thanks Bob and <department-name> leadership team for giving me opportunity to work and improve myself in this comfortable environment.

Special thanks to my manager Alen, who gave me a lot of help and guidance in my career development, which will equip me for whole career. A role model can help me lay out a career path that is realistic and practical. I believe my future career will benefit a lot from you.

Also thanks for my mentor A, B and C. We’ve been working on different projects, I learnt a lot from you about how to face the challenges and strengthen talent.

To my buddies in <project-A>(as well as PM team), <project-B>, <project-C>, it’s nice working with you. Thanks for great moment we spent during and off work.

Thanks <teammate-A> for innovation and interesting ideas in all kinds of projects. Really enjoy the creative projects we worked together in IoT area.

In the future, you can reach me via +86xxxxxxxxxxx (Wechat with same mobile). Let’s keep in touch.

With best kind regards!

xxx

Congratulations

  • Congratulations!
  • Congratulations to you!
  • Congrats to you!

Ask for Feedback

Hey Di,

The transition of IoT extensions is mainly completed. Would you please share your feedback with me about the collaboration, communication, management, etc.? I really appreciate your thoughts which are helpful to make me better in future projects :)

Yan

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