This document provides a comprehensive guide to writing effective emails. It explains that an email is a digital message that can include attachments. The objectives are to understand email structure and format, and how to write comprehensive emails. It describes the typical sections of an email - details, content, and conclusion. The details section includes from, to, and subject. The content section has a greeting, opening, and body. The conclusion has a closing, sign-off, and signature. The document provides an example email to a professor requesting a make-up test. It explains carbon copy and blind carbon copy functions for sending to multiple recipients. Finally, it notes the importance of writing good versus poor emails.

1. Electronic Mail (e-mail)
A comprehensive guide to writing emails

2. What is an e-mail?
• An electronic mail (e-mail) is a
digital message that can be sent
and received through the use of a
network. One can attach pictures,
files like pdf, word documents,
PowerPoint presentations, audios
and videos on it.

3. Objectives
• At the end of this lesson, you should:
• 1. Know the structure or format of an e-mail.
• 2. Know how to write a comprehensive e-mail.

4. Format of an e-mail
• On the right is a format of a
professional e-mail. It has the details
section (from, To and Subject), the
content section (greeting phase,
opening line, body paragraphs),
Concluding section (Closing line, Sign-
off and signature).

5. Details section
• This is the section that contains the “From, To and Subject/
Subject line” of the e-mail.
• From- This is the part where you write your professional e-mail
address.
• To- This is where you write who you are sending the e-mail to.
• Subject/ Subject line- This is a short explanation of what the
e-mail is about and it must be one line.

6. Content section
• This is a section where you find the greeting phase, opening line,and body paragraphs.
• Greeting phase- This is where you greet and show the reader who the e-mail is addressed
to (You could write “Dear Mr/Mrs” depending on the gender).
• Opening line-This is some sort of introduction for your e-mail where you catch the
reader’s attention and further explain what the e-mail is about.
• Body paragraphs- This is where you go deep and write everything you wanted to
communicate with the receiver and may include attachments like pictures and documents
if need be.

7. Concluding Section
• This is where you conclude your e-mail and you find the closing line, Sign-off
and signature).
• Closing line- This is a way of ending your e-mail (You could write “Thank
you, Sincerely or I hope my request will be approved”)
• Sign-off- This is the same thing as the closing line but this one is more brief,
this is where you officially close the e-mail with a “Thank you, Regards or
Sincerely”
• Signature- This is where you write your full name and surname, your
occupation, Company and contact details.

8. How to write an e-
mail:
• Let us write an e-mail to our ICT lecture asking
her to allow us write a sick test since we missed
the actual test. Let us separate the e-mail into
three sections (details sections, content section
and concluding section).

9. Details Section
• The minute you start typing the e-mail address of the
receiver, a wide range option of receivers appear and
you choose the correct one and in this case we have the
one “Bailey, Roxanne”

10. Details Section
continued…
• From- I put my e-mail address “mbalihali@gmail.com”
as the sender.
• To- I put “Bailey, Roxanne” as the receiver.
• Subject line- I wrote “Request for a sick test” to
elaborate on what the e-mail is about.

11. Content Section
• Greeting phase- This is where I greeted the receiver with
“Dear” and wrote the name of the person the e-mail is
addressed to “Dr. Bailey”
• Opening line-This is where I further explained the
intention of the e-mail. “I hope you are doing well…make
up test.”
• Body paragraphs-This is where I went deep and
communicated everything “I missed... Went to.” and
attached a pdf document as proof of my statement.

12. Concluding Section
• Closing line-This is where I ended the e-mail with “I
hope… approved” with no full stop!
• Sign-off-This is where I officially closed the e-mail with
“Regards,”
• Signature-This is where I wrote more details about me,
my name “Mbali…”, Student number “221…” and my
majors “Mathematics…”

13. Additional tools (Cc
& Bcc):
• This section is used when you want to send the e-mail
to more than one person. Cc stands for carbon copy
and Bcc stands for blind carbon copy and in both
multiple people receive the same e-mail but in Cc all
the receivers can see the other people who received
the e-mail while in Bcc a receiver can only see their e-
mail and not those of the other receivers.

14. Examples of poor and good e-mails
Poor Good

15. Resources
• https://youtu.be/fSHQ-oi3pDc?si=pXBMtuz-A8bnzXiH