Employment Emails: Dear or No Dear, Colons or Semi-Colons?

When job hunting, your email style can set you apart from the other applicants inquiring about the same position. With that in mind, a site visitor was curious and pondered:

After your greeting, use a colon — Dear James: — not a semi-colon or a colon and a period as shown in your examples.

You can use Dear if that is your style for addressing new contacts. I’ve never used Dear, as I believe that is more for offline written communications. But that said, I do see folks use that all the time.

Being employment-related, emails are critical to how you are perceived; you want to do whatever you can to reflect professionalism. So use what works for you and the impression you want to make.

“Dear” is very formal and can help reflect the professional formality required in business communications until your emails become more relaxed and conversational. At that point, you can go to the first name or a Hello, Name:.

Formality Matters!

Regarding employment opportunities, the most crucial consideration is that levels of formality come into play.

Just because communications are not on paper, or are perceived as less formal, doesn’t make them any less critical. Or pertinent to you making a great impression to get that job!

Yes, personal emails can undoubtedly be less formal, and it really wouldn’t matter if you used a colon or semi-colon after your opening greeting. But the notion that good writing and communication skills do not apply to email, in general, is a misconception.

Use Your Writing Skills

If you think about it, email is another way to use proper writing skills. You know, the skills that you learned in grade school.

The standards and guidelines for communicating with the written word you learned as part of your primary education do not change because you are typing in an email. Onliners who make that assumption tend to be viewed as lazy and lacking attention to detail.

Indeed not good when you are being considered for a job. Don’t you want to do everything you can to impress?

Email, albeit in a different format, is still about communicating with the written word. That’s why proper sentence structure, grammar, and format will always apply.

Articles on How to Address Emails

Here are a couple of articles you might find helpful:

Keep in mind that educated people type in an educated manner. Doing so ensures you relay a positive impression while adding to the clarity of your communications. The fact is, both of these considerations are critical to your job-hunting efforts!