Get any submissions that need review to me by Thursday night. The deadline for submission is Friday, October 20th at 2:30am so please no actual modification the correction is obviously not part of the quote: What I've done until now is correct the obvious typos, leave the otherĮxample of "modification". Sometimes when I forward a professional email, I find myself wanting If you do excise part of a sentence use ellipsis to show there was more in the original message. If you do make deletions, make sure they don't change the context/meaning of the email (eg cutting off part of a sentence can be problematic) so err on the side of caution. If you can make it clear that the change is yours, inserting a line to show the correct date is allowable as well. In which case delete everything that is not relevant. The only changes you should make to an email that you forward deletions. If necessary, confidential information such as usernames/passwords gets deleted, but I place a highlighted comment in that spot noting that confidential information was removed. and that's never a good thing.Īs to your specific examples, I never correct names, typos or wording - only incorrect information (server names, URLs, etc.) that the recipient might need. Keep in mind, however, that if you change the original email without any of these caveats in place, you're essentially putting words in the original sender's mouth. and many international locations as well. All of my jobs have been in the Houston area, but obviously I've dealt with people all over the U.S. The actual "correct" process may depend on the culture - both company-wise AND region. Either the whole remaining chain goes or nothing does. I do NOT pick & choose after that point, however. If the forwarded email contains a long chain of emails that are irrelevant to the recipient, I will remove the chain starting with the first irrelevant email. The top part (my message) includes the line "Changes to the original email are highlighted below in red", or something similar that explains about the formatting used above.If these options aren't available (such as a plain-text message), I would instead use asterisks or some other way of indicating what parts changed Any changes to the original text are bolded and use red text (or some color). More on that here and here.Īfter twenty years in the IT industry, here's how I've learned to handle forwarding emails: I'm not slighting admin roles here, but it is a problem if you're a contributor / manager and you're gaining uncharacteristic visibility for administrative tasks. There you can typically correct the occasional typo, but that's typically reserved for admin / communicator roles.ġ - As UKMonkey commented, obvious and visible changes like redacting financial information or removing the first part of the email chain are exceptions here.Ģ - None of the above applies if you actually are in an administrative / assistant role as in that case part of your responsibilities usually include improving and passing along communication. The only exception is if you're asked to simply forward something from a senior person on to a third/external party. The risk in making even minor changes is that it trains you to not consider modifying those mails an issue which can start blurring the borders between " he missed an S here" and " I'm sure he meant that we would be making that deadline". If you're communicating with third parties and you're worried about perception issues of some content or even formatting earlier in the email chain, that's a clear sign that you shouldn't be forwarding that mail.įrom now on, consider the original mail as inviolate and forward it as-is and only when needed. Many, if not most, people will be annoyed or hurt that you felt the need to "fix" what they wrote originally, even if what they wrote was crap.Īnd if you're making more substantial changes by guessing at intent, which can happen easily when you're improving the writing of someone writing in their second or third language, you can cause all sorts of problems. If you're "only" making harmless typo fixes that could be seen as petty or like you're overly fixated on spelling and grammar, and you risk being seen as having more of an administrative role 2. When you're forwarding an email, it's implied that you're leaving the original email chain untouched or that you use some kind of formatting to make it clear where you're adding comments.
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