Page 103 - How to write effective business English your guide to excellent professional communication by Fiona Talbot

92 How to Write Effective Business English

If I tell you that Harry Brown speaks only English, can you see how
unhelpful this thread is going to be? First of all, who is dealing with
Harry’s request? It seems to be being passed from one person to
another but Harry does not know that. The fact that Pilar Lopez
has helpfully suggested (in Spanish) that Harry call her, is not some-
thing he is going to see from the thread. After all, it’s Pierre who
understands Spanish, not Harry. Also, why is Pilar suggesting that
he give her a call, when he had asked Pierre for details by e-mail?
How is Harry going to feel? Annoyed? Yes. Alienated? Yes. Is
the matter resolved? No. Harry will have to make further enquir-
ies. To avoid this alienation (of which the sender is normally una-
ware, as it’s rarely intentional) you could try these alternatives:

● ● be both courteous and efficient by summarizing, in English, the
main facts of the message thread;

● ● avoid multilingual threads altogether;
● ● start each message afresh.

Embedding responses

Whether or not you embed responses is a question of knowing
how well this method works both for you and your recipients.
Younger generations often cannot imagine working any other way.
For others it’s actually stressful, especially for managers left to
weave together perhaps five differing views, all embedded into the
original e-mail.
Have you ever had to figure out what the overall picture is, at
the end of a complicated trail of embedded messages? It’s challeng-
ing enough in your native language! Imagine how much worse this
will be where you have to try to interpret broken or variant English
too. There’s a point at which embedding messages can become
‘hiding messages’. Quit before you get to that point – and start a
new e-mail! This example shows you how tricky it can be to deci-
pher embedded text. Let’s say your e-mail asks four people in four
different countries for their observations. You suggest they each