Email etiquette is essential for effective communication in both personal and professional contexts. While we all work in a variety of tools across business and personal life, email still reigns supreme as a method of communication between coworkers, acquaintances, partners, friends, family and more.
Why Email Etiquette Matters at Work
First, let’s define email etiquette. What is the definition of email etiquette anyways?
Professional email etiquette is the basic, semi-unspoken rules of communicating professionally over email. The guidelines of email etiquette and best practices help everyone work together with less friction, fewer misunderstandings, and more effective comms. At a high level, this includes things like writing clear subject lines, ensuring you use polite and appropriate tone, and including the right teammates.
Making sure your emails are polished is important in your personal life, but most critically in the workspace. This is even clearer now more than ever, as we’ve got a slew of advanced AI email tools that generate emails, draft replies and more. Entire industries are being built around email etiquette and prompt reply!
It’s also important to consider that most people in 2025 use their mobile devices to answer emails, especially during “off” hours or on the weekends. That means that etiquette has a few different variations based on the method of usage.
Common Email Mistakes to Avoid
Even well-intentioned emails can backfire. Avoid these common pitfalls to keep your communication clear, respectful, and effective.
- Burying the ask: If readers must hunt for your request, it will be missed. Lead with the action needed and the deadline in the first sentence.
- Vague subjects: “Quick question” is not helpful. Use action-oriented subjects with context and dates, like “Approve Q4 brief by Friday.”
- Reply-all overload: Keep only decision-makers on the thread. Move FYIs to a summary or a separate note to reduce noise.
- Wall-of-text messages: Long paragraphs discourage reading. Use short paragraphs and bullets, and add a TL;DR for complex topics.
- Missing ownership: Always name an owner and due date. Close with next steps to prevent ambiguity.
- Tone misfires: Sarcasm and urgency flags can be misread.
- Mixing topics: New requests deserve new threads. It improves searchability and reduces confusion.
- No follow-up plan: Set reminders for time-sensitive asks. One thoughtful nudge beats a flurry of pings.
- Attachment chaos: Use clear file names and provide one line of context per link.
- Ignoring time zones: Schedule send to the recipient’s working hours when possible.
We’ve all fallen victim to a few of these mistakes, but no fear, we’ve drafted up some of our favorite tips to lean into when it comes to all things email etiquette.
12 Practical Email Etiquette Tips to Use Daily
By following these 16 email etiquette rules, you can ensure that you’re appropriately communicating in personal and business contexts. Let’s dig in.
1. Subject Line Clarity
Starting off the email with a clear subject line, giving the receives maximum content as to what you’re messaging about, it important.
This goes for personal and professional correspondences – I bet we’re all much more likely to answer an email that has an interesting subject line!
In your personal inbox, aka sending emails to friends and family, the subject line is slightly less “formal,” but in a business context, it’s the most important part of the whole email. Thankfully, there are tools that can help make it easier to craft emails with the best email etiquette, aka the ones that are most likely to be opened and replied to quickly.
Buzz Mail in Hive is a super easy way to get started with relevant email drafting, because Hive actually creates the subject line, body text, and next steps for you. It takes the guess work out of figuring out just the right positioning or tone.
It learns from your previous emails and takes explicit direction to align with your tone, which brings us to our second email etiquette must-have. Try Buzz Mail now.
2. Personalized Tone
Just like a subject line is important, it’s also important to make sure the email you’re writing actually reflects your personal tone. This is relevant both personally and professionally – you can tell when someone put time and energy into crafting a reply. Which then shows you that the person actually cares about the message their sending.
If you want to employ AI email assistants to help you with that, they definitely can. Buzz and Hive Mail do this, as do many on the market – they learn from the previous emails and context you’ve sent to ensure that the message actually sounds like you, and not just some robot.
Obviously, the tone you use depends on the relationship you have with the recipient, but keeping things streamlined with your previous communications keeps things authentic.
3. Time of Day Awareness
No one wants to receive an email at 1 AM. Even if the person doesn’t look at their inbox until the next morning, it sends a message that you don’t respect workday boundaries. The exception for this if of course, if there are international teams operating and collaborating in a variety of time zones – that would understandably affect the business hours and hours that emails are received.
A great way to avoid this email etiquette fail would be to schedule emails to send at a designated time of day. For example, if you’re working late and want to send an update email to your team, schedule it to be sent at 8 AM instead of 12 AM when you’re actually writing the email.
It sends the message to everyone receiving the email that you’re respecting working hours, and sets the communications up for success. Email etiquette 101.
4. Calls to Action or Next Steps
This is specifically relevant for professional emails…there’s no need to send an email to a colleague or coworker with no immediate next step or accompanying context. Our recommendation? Lead with the ask in the first sentence. Even better? Keep paragraphs short and use bullets for 3+ items.
Keeping emails, and their subject lines, short and concise are helpful for everyone involved. No one wants to waste time, or spend more time than needed, read through an email with filler or unnecessary information. It’s essential email etiquette to keep things tight.
Bonus: If you use Buzz, you can ask Buzz to “Summarize and sharpen” to condense long drafts. Buzz can also suggest and write copy for you, but he can also be employed to edit existing copy or tighten up language throughout an email and thread.
Second bonus: Buzz can also add relevant labels to emails, like “Needs Reply” or “FYI” which can help you identify which emails need response or next steps addressed immediately.
5. Give it time to simmer
This goes for emails of all types. There’s really no need to response immediately, especially if there’s either sensitive information or complex topics included in the thread.
Additionally, no one really expects to send an email and get a reply 10 minutes later…that is actually a fear I think most professionals have. Sending an email, completing a to-do, and then be faced with the need to reply back again almost immediately.
If you want to get started on tackling the item, start drafting an email response, and then ask Buzz to review or “rewrite” for more “neutral or clear” content. You can also always send a preview to a colleague to review nad ensure that email etiquette is being followed appropriately.
If you really want to check the item off your to-do list, write the email, give it a check with Buzz, and schedule the send for a few hours from then. I personally love to schedule a send if I want to check off the box of replying, but don’t necessarily need to send it right away.
6. Spellcheck is your best friend
Run a quick grammar and clarity pass before sending emails, ALWAYS. It’s imperative that you do this professionally, and definitely important personally as well – no one wants to send their parents or sister-in-law a nonsensical email. It’s an email etiquette no-no all around.
Email providers, and AI email assistants, usually have built-in gates to make sure that you’re not sending off emails with crazy misspellings. However, can also use tools like Buzz in Hive to run quick grammar or clarity passes before sending your message out. If all else fails, having a friend or co-worker proofread something (especially if it’s of high importance) is always great too.
7. Add “out of office” notes
A good piece of email etiquette to follow, even if you’re out for just two or three days, is to set an automatic OOO response with dates and an escalation contact. This helps people feel supported and heard if they’re reaching out to you for a reply, or an urgent ask, and don’t get a response from you during your time away. I think it’s always better to know that someone is OOO, and that’s the reason for their delay in reply.
Adding a short OOO message with a next best contact, even if it’s a general email address, helps the people trying to contact you, and also sets the expectations for when replies can be expected on your return to the office.
If you’re working in Hive, you can even ask Buzz to draft a sample OOO message for you and spin up a Form for urgent items. You can link the form directly from your OOO, as they are viewable and submittable as URLs, giving people a direct link to submit their items for tackling when you’re back.
Setting up the form in Hive to route directly to an action, or a templated project, makes it easier for everyone when you return. Other teammates can even hop in and help triage the request while you’re gone. That’s an email etiquette tip I can get behind.
8. Minimize reply all
You’re not Michael Scott at Dunder Mifflin – the entire office doesn’t need to know everything about everything going on in your workplace or business. “Reply All” definitely has a time and place for use, but email etiquette says it’s not all that often.
If you’re working on a project with many participants, and use email as your primary form of update or correspondence, then absolutely use “Reply All.” But if you’re looking to triage a specific issue or continue a side conversation with a teammate, please just reply directly to that person. The email etiquette gods will thank you, and your colleague’s inboxes will be a happier place for it.
You can also implement Buzz to ensure you’re replying back to the right people – you can either ask Buzz to “suggest recipients to remove/keep,” or have Buzz draft a separate focused thread on the specific action items that need follow-up.
9. Make attachments/links easy to scan
I’m sure we’ve all been sent emails with some unclear attachments before. They either have a non-sensical file name, weird file type, or no context for the file itself in the email. That’s poor email etiquette and can confuse the recipients (this goes for personal and professional emails, I know we’ve all been sent emails by family members with a weird photo attachment).
Our suggestion? Name files clearly and add 1-line context for each link. Renaming files before you upload them is always helpful, especially in a professional email context, having the files be scannable and understandable just by glancing over the names is very helpful. It also increases the odds that someone will read all of the email.
If you’re unsure whether your email has enough context with the attachments or links, you can always ask Buzz to read over the email and confirm it all makes sense. Buzz is your email etiquette bestie.
10. Follow up once, not endlessly
Just like it’s important to give email replies a bit of time to breathe, it’s also important to know when to close out the thread. No one wants to be followed up with 12 times, especially if it’s not an urgent item or you’re trying to push people to purchase something.
What we recommend, if there’s an action item that needs to be pushed forward, is nudge after the due date or after 2–3 business days. If you don’t get a response during that window, and it’s an urgent request, you can always reach out to someone else on the team.
Odds are, the original recipient is either out of office, or just doesn’t have the time to assist. That’s when you can call in back-up support, and stop sending the recipient more follow-ups. It’s just bad email etiquette.
11. Keep thread focused
Another important piece of email etiquette is to keep threads focused and concise. It can be overwhelming when you’re reading through an email and have five different streams of thought or next steps to action. Frankly, that discourages people from tackling any of the items in the first place, as they’ll probably be overwhelmed.
Instead, start new email threads for additional requests as you think of them. And honestly, email etiquette tells us that you can probably remove some of the original recipients, or change the main teammate you’re emailing, if you’ve got a bunch of disparate requests anyways.
If you MUST send one email with 2-3 requests, we’d recommend adding them as bullets towards the front of the email. This allows the reader to immediately understand what they’re being asked. If you’re using Buzz in Hive, he can also create next steps as action cards for you, so you don’t miss anything.
12. Templates exist
One of the beautiful things about email is that templates exist. If you find yourself sending out the same type of email day in and day out, just standardize the language. This piece of email etiquette is actually more to save YOU time than the receivers, and you’ll thank us later.
If you want to use Buzz to create email templates based on content in your workspace, actions and more, it’s even easier. Buzz makes email etiquette a breeze.
Email Etiquette Templates You Can Steal
If you’re still not quite sure how to ensure your emails come off with the right tone and content, here are a few easy professional email etiquette templates to copy and paste.
If you drop one of these into Hive Mail, you can also ask Buzz to customize this with small tweaks to ensure it aligns with your personal tone.
1. Following Up
Subject line: “Following up on [previous ask]
Hi [Name],
I hope you’re having a great week. I’m following up on the note I sent on [date] regarding [summary of request].
When you have a moment, could you please share an update? This will help me [complete a task/meet a deadline/share an update].
Thanks so much for your time.
Best,
[Your Name]
2. Request for Assistance on Task or Project
Subject: Request for [Information/Approval/Support] on [Project/Task]
Hi [Name],
I hope you’re doing well. I’m reaching out to request [specific item or help] regarding [context or project].
To move forward, I’ll need:
- [Requirement 1]
- [Requirement 2]
- [Optional deadline or detail]
Please let me know if you need any additional information from me. Thanks in advance for your help.
Best,
[Your Name]
3. Task Delegation
Subject: Delegating [Task/Responsibility] for [Project]
Hi [Name],
I hope you’re doing well. I’d like to pass this [task or responsibility] to you as part of [project].
Here are the details:
- Objective: [Goal]
- Key information: [Context]
- Deadline: [Date]
- Resources or support: [Documents, people, tools]
Let me know if you have questions or would like to discuss before moving forward. Thanks for taking this on.
Best,
[Your Name]
4. Request for Clarification
Subject: Clarification Needed on [Topic/Task]
Hi [Name],
Thanks for the update on [project or topic]. I wanted to clarify one point to ensure I’m aligned before proceeding.
Could you confirm:
- [Specific question]?
If it’s easier, I’m happy to jump on a quick call.
Thanks for your help.
Best,
[Your Name]
5. Introduction Email
Subject: Introduction: [Your Name] and [Other Person’s Name]
Hi both,
I’m excited to connect you.
[Person A], meet [Person B].
[Person A]: [Brief role and relevance]
[Person B]: [Brief role and relevance]
You two should connect on [purpose of intro].
I’ll let you take it from here. Let me know if you need anything else from me.
Best,
[Your Name]
Conclusion
To wrap things up, let us reiterate the importance of a few things. If you’re only going to take away three things from this article.
- Use Spell check – The easiest and quickest way to derail an email thread is misspellings. Don’t be that person.
- Use a clear Subject line – No one wants to receive an email with a confusing subject line, or worse…NO subject line! It’s 2025. Use a tool like Buzz to help if you’re stuck
- Use “reply all” sparingly – Like we said, you’re not Michael Scott. The entire office doesn’t need to know everything.
Happy emailing!
