Welcome back to Understanding Etiquette – the series where we get to grips with the customary codes of polite behavior, and how to abide by them.

In last edition, we talked about the right way to write an e-mail in the business world. Today, though, we’re talking about something much more personal; the sympathy letter.

Sympathy letters are never easy to write. Whether the recipient is going through an illness, a personal crisis or a bereavement, it’s a difficult correspondence to make. But, knowing how to write a sympathy letter is a tremendously important skill. The truth is that these correspondences do bring comfort to the recipient during a time of need.

If you need to write a sympathy letter and are struggling to find the right words, this guide can help.

Always write it

“They probably know I’m thinking of them.”

Plenty of people who are anxious about writing a sympathy letter will justify not sending one with this statement.

And here’s the thing: the recipient doesn’t doubt that you’re thinking of them. But, actually sending a correspondence makes that thought tangible. It can bring a genuine comfort, however small, during a difficult time.

No excuses then. Write it. Send it. Remember that, however difficult you might find it to pen the thing, it’s nothing compared to the difficulties the recipient is facing.

Write promptly

Letters of sympathy might be difficult to write, but they’re not something you should put off doing. Time is of the essence when it comes to these kinds of correspondences for two reasons:

• If your letter arrives months after the news of someone’s personal crisis, it feels like your correspondence was an afterthought.
• If you put off writing the letter, then chances are you’ll forget about writing it altogether.

If you find out that a friend or family member is going through a difficult time, then get your letter sent off as soon as possible. It might be hard to write, but a prompt correspondence shows the recipient that you genuinely care about them.

Remember what it’s for

When writing a letter for a solemn occasion, it’s easy to fall into the trap of trying to be profound or philosophical. It’s a well-intentioned goal: you want to say something meaningful that will take away some of the pain that the recipient is feeling. The truth, though, is that you can’t. Something bad has happened, or is happening to that person and there’s probably very little you can do about it.

What your letter needs to convey is solidarity and empathy. Don’t worry about trying to say something wise and meaningful, and remember, your recipient isn’t looking to you to alleviate the situation. Your aim here is simply to let that person know you’re thinking of them. Don’t be afraid to keep it simple and from the heart. That’s what matters.

Offer your help

Following on from point number one, letting someone know that you’re thinking of them extends to letting them know that they can rely on you. “If you ever need anyone to talk to/if you want to hang out to take your mind off things, just give me a call” – it’s a simple statement, but reaching out in that way can bring a lot of comfort. During times of personal crisis, it’s easy to feel isolated. Letting the recipient know that they’re not alone can be very comforting.

Don’t compare your situation to theirs (unless it’s actually comparable)

“I know just how you feel”; we use this phrase all the time in day-to-day life to show that we empathize with the situations of friends, colleagues or family. And, in the context of normalcy, it’s a pretty effective show of solidarity. However, if you’re writing a letter of condolence or of sympathy, then you’re well beyond the realms of normalcy, and different rules apply.

Before you try comparing your situation to the recipients, ask yourself if it’s truly comparable. If you have a similar experience of bereavement, divorce, illness etc., then sharing your experience of your situation could be helpful. If you don’t, though, you run the risk of coming across as self-centered. The letter becomes about how you felt during a particular time in your life, rather than how the recipient is feeling right now.

The truth is, you don’t always have to understand how the recipient is feeling. If you’re talking to someone who’s been diagnosed with cancer, or whose child has died and you’ve never experienced those things, you probably won’t. And that doesn’t matter. Again, remember that you’re not writing to alleviate the situation, but to show support.

Make it neat

Back in 2009, (then) British Prime Minister Gordon Brown came under fire because of a sympathy note he sent to the family of a killed solider. Why? Because the letter had numerous spelling mistakes and was written in a hastily scrawled handwriting.

At the time, this made national news in the UK and caused a minor outrage. Brown’s letter was sincere in its content, but not in its presentation:

“He said, ‘I know words can offer little comfort’. When the words are written in such a hurry the letter is littered with more than 20 mistakes, they offer no comfort,” said the letter’s recipient, Mrs. Janes.

There’s an important lesson to learn from this. Your sympathy note needs to look as considered as the words it contains. That means immaculate handwriting, rigorous proofreading and correct grammar.

If handwriting is not your strong point, then there’s nothing wrong with typing your letter (it’s probably what Gordon Brown should have done). Whatever you do, make sure that the end result is neat, presentable and reflects the sentiments of its content.   

That’s it for this edition. Make sure you join us next time, when we’ll be talking about etiquette dos and don’ts in the world of business.

Welcome back to Understanding Etiquette – the series where we get to grips with the customary codes of polite behavior, and how to abide by them.

In the last edition of this series, we talked about online etiquette, and the rules to abide by in the digital realm. Today, we’re getting to grips with the do’s and don’ts of writing an email – particularly in the business world.

Email’s been a mainstay in business for over 20 years now, but you’d be amazed by how many people still haven’t grasped the right way to write an electronic message to a colleague or superior.

If you’re in that camp though, fear not. That’s what this guide is for! Let’s dive in.

Remember who the message is for

In real life, you talk to different people in different ways. You’re not going to address your college buddies the same way as you would your boss, for example. Same applies with e-mail.

Before you start writing your message, think about who the message is for and let that guide the content. Writing to an old friend, for example, and a casual “hey,” “hi” or “yo” is probably a perfectly way to start the message. If you’re writing to a colleague, on the other hand, that won’t fly – a more formal “Hello” or “Dear…” would be much more appropriate.

Same goes with the body of the message. If you’re writing in a professional context, then slang, colloquialisms and text-speak are a no-go zone. The same goes for excess capitalization and exclamation point usage. Good grammar and proper English are an absolute must. They make you look like a professional, and they make the meaning of your message much clearer for the recipient.

Speaking of which…

Proofread it

Never hit the send key the instant you’ve finished your email. You might be making an etiquette faux pas if you do.

Proofreading an email might seem like a waste of time. “Who cares about a couple of teensy grammatical mistakes in the scheme of things, right?”

As it happens, professionals care. An email full of spelling mistakes and bad grammar makes the writer look sloppy, careless, even badly educated. That’s not a good impression to leave, especially if this is the first correspondence you’re having with a person.

It’s not just mistakes you’re looking for when proofreading though. You need to make sure that your email makes sense. Are you conveying your meaning clearly and succinctly? Or will the reader need a Rosetta stone to decipher your run-on sentences and strange verb choices?

Spending those extra few minutes to fine tune your message can really make a difference to the reader, so don’t be afraid to put the time in.

The subject heading matters

Once again, this is about clarity of communication. Busy professionals often get hundreds of emails sent to their inbox a day. If you want to make sure your message gets noticed, it’s important that you communicate the subject of it clearly.

From an etiquette perspective, doing this is beneficial to the reader because it makes their life easier. They know exactly what that email refers to, and can file it until the appropriate time in their day to open it and respond to it.

Subject lines like “Hey [INSERT NAME HERE]” or “Yo!” give the impression that the correspondence isn’t serious. Those are the emails that tend to be forgotten about and get lost in inbox purgatory. A heading like “3^rd Quarter Report Attached,” on the other hand, leaves no doubt as to the content of the email. It makes life easier for the recipient, and means that your message is much more likely to get noticed.

Use humor with caution

In a face-to-face encounter, a well-timed joke or witty observation can be the perfect icebreaker. With that in mind, it might seem logical to enliven your emails with a little humor.

But, you need to approach humor with caution in written correspondences. Why? Because it’s easier for your meaning to be misconstrued in writing.

When we tell a joke in person, the recipient has many ways to read our meaning; our words, the tone of our voice, our posture, our facial expression. In an email, however, it’s just the words, and, without those other signifiers, we run the risk of being misinterpreted.

What you thought was a warm and witty response might be read as cold and sarcastic, and could leave a bad impression with the reader.

That’s not to say that humor is a complete no-go. If you already have an established rapport with someone, a well-deployed written joke might work. But, when contacting someone you don’t have an existing relationship with, it’s a good idea to avoid humor altogether.

Respond to every message

(Every legitimate email that is – we’re not expecting you to get back to spammers!)

The flip side of writing good emails is responding to them in a timely and polite manner.

You probably know how frustrating it is when people don’t get back to enquiries, need following up or take an obnoxiously long time to respond to a message. Don’t be that guy!

Respond to every message as quickly and courteously as you can, even if it’s just a brief message to acknowledge you’ve seen the email. You might not have an answer straight away, that’s fine. But making sure the recipient knows you’ve seen their message and will eventually have a response for them is a polite way of handling the situation. (On a related note, make sure that you actually respond to that enquiry – don’t say you will and then forget about it!)

This is one caveat to all this, however. We’re not expecting you to get back to enquiries over the weekend or outside of your office hours. Etiquette works both ways. People shouldn’t be contacting you during these times in the first place, and neither should you be responding to them. If you get an email on Saturday evening, your response can wait until Monday morning.

Avoid angry emails

We made this point in the online etiquette article last week, but it bears repeating here.

There are times when a message will appear in your inbox that will really grind your gears. It happens. Sometimes people, whether intentionally or not, will rub you up the wrong way. But don’t, whatever you do, fire off a venomous response in a fit of rage. You will regret it and you will come across as the bad guy, even if they started it.

If you can’t hold off writing that angry response, then here’s the solution. Draft it in a Word document (NOT your mail client – you don’t want to accidentally send it!), then do something to take your mind off it for an hour or two. Once you’ve gotten some headspace, check the email draft again. You’ll likely realize the faux par you were about to make and either

1. redraft it to soften the content
2. write something else altogether

Either way, you’ll save yourself a major headache by taking a step back.

That’s it for this edition. Make sure you join us next time, when we’ll be talking moving outside of the business realm, and looking at personal e-mails for serious occasions.

Welcome back to Understanding Etiquette – the series where we get to grips with the customary codes of polite behavior, and how to abide by them.

In the past two editions of this series, we talked about the etiquette of face-to-face conversation, how to make a good first impression and the way to approach difficult subjects like politics and religion.

But, in this day and age, online conversation is often as pervasive as its face-to-face counterpart. And, when you’re not speaking directly to another person, but mediated via a screen, a whole load of new issues crop up.

As we all know, online conversation spaces can be volatile. Between the trolls and s—tposters, the uncompromising ideologues and petulant politicos, it sometimes feels like the concept of etiquette has gone to hell in a hand basket.

It doesn’t have to be this way though. Surprising as it might sound, it is possible to have civil conversations in online spaces. And, doing so often comes down to adhering to the tried-and-tested rules of etiquette you’d use in the real world.

If you’re sick of flame wars and crave real, meaningful and gentlemanly conversation on the internet, then check out the advice below.

Remember that you’re talking to human beings:

Online anonymity is a strange thing. When you’re not face-to-face with a person, but an avatar or a user name, it has a big impact on how you behave. In no small part, that’s because the person on the other side of the screen ceases, in our minds at least, to be human being.

But, that’s a huge problem when it comes to behaving like a gentleman online. Remove that human element, and we feel positively uninhibited when commenting on forums, articles or social media.

The notion of “hurting someone’s feelings” goes completely out the window. Without that consequence, people get mean, hurl insults and say things that would never fly in polite conversation.

That’s in no small part why things get out of hand in online conversation so quickly. When you get a whole group of people disconnected from one another, not viewing each other as human beings, then things get volatile fast.

If you want to change that, you need to remember that you’re not interacting with robots. These are people you’re talking to, so treat them as such. They might not always respond in kind, but you’re just going to have to take that on the chin, be a better man and not rise to it.

Ask yourself: “would you say it in real life?”

Ok, so far so good, but what should writing like you’re talking to a human being look like? Honestly, not that dissimilar from what it’s like when you talk to people in person.

If you’ve not read it already, we’d recommend checking out the first two articles in this series on conversation etiquette (LINKS HERE). Because, when it comes to interacting online, those same rules broadly apply.

A good rule of thumb when positing on forums, social media etc. – especially if you have reservations about the tone or content of the post – is to run it through the advice laid out in those articles. Does it fit the criteria? Or does it fall short?

If what you’ve written in that response box is something you’d never say to someone in real life, consider very carefully whether you want to post it online. Chances are, it’ll go down about as well in cyberspace as it would at a real world social gathering.

Pause before you post:

As we’ve already noted, it’s easy for online discussions to get heated. Someone says something that rubs you up the wrong way, something that you vehemently disagree with, or something that goes against your core values. The instant response is to write a response that either:

1. In no uncertain terms shows them that you’re the intellectual superior and that their point is garbage.
2. Tells them that they’re a terrible person and that you have the moral high ground.

So you jump straight in, rage post, and feel vindicated… until your online nemesis posts their expletive filled response and the process starts all over again.

To avoid getting stuck in these cycles, it’s important that you think before you post. If you’re getting riled up during an online discussion, take a step back and assess whether the manner in which you’re posting is exacerbating the situation. If the answer is “yes,” then try a different approach.

Oh, and remember that, even though you’re passionate about the subject you’re talking about, this is just a discussion on the internet. Proving your point to a bunch of random people in the comments section isn’t going to change the world.

On a related note, if you are a truly passionate individual who really does want to change the world, put your energy into activism, community work or something else that will have a real world impact. You’ll find your desire to rage on the internet significantly diminishes if you do.

If in doubt, walk away:

Returning to a point we made in Part 2 – on politics and religion – ask yourself what’s prompted you to respond in the first place. Are you genuinely interested in understanding someone else’s point of view? Do you have something constructive to add to the conversation? Or are you diving headfirst into this discussion because you want to prove you’re right?

If the answer is point three, then walk away from the computer, make yourself a hot drink and go for a walk. Jumping into this online discussion is a waste of your time and will not get you anywhere.

Likewise, if you respond to a post cordially, politely and with a genuine desire to understand, but get a barrage of abuse from the other poster(s), don’t rise to the situation. If someone’s behaving like a petulant teenager (and remember, as we pointed out earlier, they might actually be a petulant teenager), you’re not going to get through to him or her, so don’t waste your energy trying. Walk away, move on and find a space where genuine conversation is valued.

That’s it for this week’s edition. Make sure you join us next time, when we’ll be talking about the correct approach to written correspondence; from letters of sympathy to winning business e-mails. 

Welcome back to Understanding Etiquette – the series where we get to grips with the customary codes of polite behavior, and how to abide by them.

In last week’s edition, we talked about the basics of conversation etiquette; how to start off on the right foot when talking to new people and how to avoid the awkwardness of a bad first impression.

Today, though, we’re getting to grips with talking about subjects that are normally considered conversational taboo. Many people maintain that religion and politics are topics that should never enter polite, civilized conversation. People often feel so strongly about these areas that things can become heated very quickly, sometimes descending into unpleasantness.

While it’s true that religion and politics can be divisive subjects, that doesn’t mean they’re off the table altogether. What many people don’t realize is that there’s a “right” way to talk about them; one that allows for a healthy exchange of ideas without sliding into nastiness.

Being able to discuss politics and religion in a civilized manner is a skill that any self-respecting, 21^st century gentleman needs. But how do you go about doing that? Read on and find out.

Gently does it

Jumping headfirst into a heated conversation about politics or religion is a surefire way of getting into hot water. Bold statements of your opinion – “I think that religion is the root of all evil,” “[x politician] is a complete jerk” – have the potential to immediately alienate those that don’t feel the same way and can be instant conversation killers.

Gentle questions – asking whether somebody goes to church for example – are less intimidating ways of starting the conversation. And, depending on how the respondent answers, you can get a feel of whether this is a conversation the other person wants to have. Some people straight up don’t want to talk politics and religion. If that’s the case, then don’t force it.

It’s not a debate

Why are you starting this conversation in the first place? Is it because you want to understand this person better and you’re open to different perspectives? Or is it because you’ve got an axe to grind about a particular political or religious belief?

When you’re having a conversation, especially with a relative unknown, you’re not there to enter into a debate. You’ve just met this person. Trying, straight away, to bring them around to your point of view is a surefire recipe for disaster.

Instead, you need to be prepared for a differing opinion. You’re not trying to convert; you’re trying to understand. And, where you can, to find common ground with that person in spite of your differences. If you can go in with that mindset, then politics and religion might be safe topics of conversation. But, if you’ve got a firebrand tendency when it comes to these topics, then avoid them altogether.

On a related note, “what”, rather than “how” and “why” questions are always more diplomatic when it comes to politics and religion. Ask someone “how can you believe that?” or “why do you believe that?” and it feels like an attack. “What makes you believe that?,” on the other hand, feels like you’re genuinely interested in understanding where they’re coming from.  

Don’t make assumptions

Sometimes, our political and religious beliefs seem, to us at least, like the commonsense options. This is especially true if the majority of people in our social circle, family, or on our social media channels, shares the same view.

But, once you get out into the wide world, that’s inevitably going to change. People will disagree with you – and they may have good reasons to. Don’t assume that someone is on your side before you start a conversation. The moment you find out they’re not, conversation-killing awkwardness ensues.

Cool, calm and collected

There’s nothing wrong with things becoming lively, but it’s when people start to lose their cool that conversations on politics and religion go south.

If you feel that your temper is getting frayed, if inflammatory language is creeping into the discussion, or if one or more participants is starting to look uncomfortable, then it’s time to dial it back, or change the subject altogether.

Oh, and if you know that politics and religion are subjects that really grind your gears, then proceed with caution. Never pick a conversation topic that’s going to rile you up. If you’re the one that brings up a topic and then blows your top when talking about it, you’re going to come across as the bad guy, regardless of what the other person said.

Have an escape plan

Even with the calmest temperament and the most genuine desire for understanding, you can’t always guarantee that your fellow conversationalists will play ball. Be ready with other topics of conversation to fall back on, or a polite way to excuse yourself if things start going the wrong way. 

Time and a place

Finally, but perhaps most importantly, remember that politics and religion are not topics of conversation for every occasion. You might not want for a “charged” conversation to get out of hand at a wedding, for example, as a disagreement could spoil the memories of the day. At a gathering of friends, by contrast, an animated political discussion might make for an incredibly enjoyable time.

But these aren’t hard and fast suggestions. It’s up to you to read a situation, and to look for signs from other conversation participants so that you know where you stand. Pay attention to the signals from those around you, and you’ll soon work out whether this is the time or place for a given discussion.

That’s it for this week. Join us next time, when we get to grips with written etiquette, and how we approach that in the online age.