Business email in English: structure and phrases that work
A working email is judged in two lines: who you are to the reader, and what you want from them. Everything after that is detail. The grammar of most professional emails is well within B1; what goes wrong is register, and register is a choice of phrases rather than a matter of knowing more words.
Three registers, and picking one in five seconds
English at work runs on three settings, and mixing them is what makes a message feel off even when every sentence is correct.
- Formal. A regulator, a bank, a first approach to a company you have never dealt with, anything with legal weight. Full forms, no contractions, no exclamation marks.
- Neutral professional. The default for nine emails out of ten: clients, suppliers, colleagues in another office. Contractions are fine, warmth is fine, slang is not.
- Familiar. A team you speak to daily. Short lines, first names, and the same rule as everywhere else: nothing you would mind being forwarded.
The safe move with a new correspondent is to open one notch more formal than you expect to end up, then follow the register they reply in. Coming down is easy; climbing back up after being too casual is not.
The opening: greeting, first line, purpose
Open with the reason for writing before the background. A reader who knows why the message exists will read the context; a reader who meets the context first often stops halfway.
| Situation | Line that carries it |
|---|---|
| First contact, name known | Dear Ms Carter, I am writing regarding the July shipment schedule |
| Reply that keeps the thread moving | Thanks for coming back to me so quickly. Two things on that |
| Referred by someone | Anna Ivanenko suggested I get in touch about the integration project |
| Long gap since the last email | It has been a while since we spoke about the pilot, and I wanted to pick it back up |
| Bad news at the top | I am afraid we will not make Friday, and here is what we are proposing instead |
Requests, replies and attachments
A request has three parts: what you need, by when, and what happens if the date slips. Politeness in English lives in the verb form, not in extra adjectives, so could you and would you be able to do more work than a paragraph of apology.
Two small habits save the most time. Name the deadline as a date and a weekday, because "next Tuesday" is ambiguous across time zones and calendars. And describe the attachment in one clause, so the reader knows whether to open it now or later.
The awkward ones: refusing, chasing, disagreeing
These are the emails people postpone, and postponing them is what turns a small problem into an escalation. Each has a shape that keeps the relationship intact.
| What you need to say | How it lands well in English |
|---|---|
| No, without closing the door | We are not able to take this on at the moment, though I would be glad to look at it again in the autumn |
| A second reminder | Just bringing this back to the top of your inbox in case it slipped through |
| Disagreeing with a decision | I see it differently, and here is the part that worries me |
| Missing your own deadline | We are running two days behind on the report. The new date is Thursday 18 September |
| Asking someone to redo work | This is close, but the pricing section still needs the updated figures before we can send it on |
Notice what none of those lines do: apologise twice, blame a third party, or hide the point in the last paragraph. In English business writing an apology repeated is read as a request for reassurance, and the reader now has a second job.
Closing without a template
The last line should say what happens next, and it is the easiest place to sound like a machine. "Looking forward to hearing from you" is fine once a month; a version that names the next step is better every time: I will send the revised quote on Wednesday, or Let me know if Thursday morning works and I will book the call. Sign-offs are simpler than people fear: Kind regards covers almost everything, Best wishes reads warmer, and Yours sincerely belongs with a named formal salutation.
Two things people ask about email
One habit to try tomorrow: before sending, delete the first sentence and see whether the email still makes sense. It usually does, because the first sentence is often a warm-up that the reader does not need. Written English improves faster than spoken English because you can edit it, which is why correspondence is the part of a business English course where progress shows first. And if writing is easy but the same conversation on a call is not, that gap has its own causes, set out in how to overcome the language barrier.