In your business communication courses, do you ever wonder how much emphasis you should be placing on writing emails? In “The Snowball of Emails We Deal With’: CCing in Multinational Companies,” Ifigeneia Machili of University of Macedonia, Greece; Jo Angouri of Warwick University, UK; and Nigel Harwood of University of Sheffield, UK confirm that email is the current most dominant business communication genre.
 
Emails are not, however, alone on center stage. They interweave with video conferences, phone calls, texts, webinars, and more. Also, they function interdependently with previous and subsequent emails, reports, face-to-face conversations, social media, local and remote meetings, and phone calls. Further, emails must be fluid and flexible as they develop credibility, build/maintain social and organizational relationships, and be sensitive to formality, politeness, credibility, accountability, self-projection, and multiple audiences.
 
The Research
In their analysis of email chains in an international organization, the researchers found that emails play a pivotal role in managing interpersonal relations and operational matters. Through discourse-based interviews, the researchers learned how employees strategically highlighted their professional achievements and owned or denied responsibility for decisions throughout the email chains. In addition to transmitting information, emails employed CCing (carbon copying) and formality to help (1) establish accountability, (2) contribute to decision-making, and (3) enable self-projection.
 
The Implications
The results validate the need for business communication instructors to include intensive email instruction. Students must realize that emails are not simple one-and-done messages, but rather critical communication exchanges that must be sensitive to a host of subtle contextual factors. Showing real-world email chains can help students become aware of the contextual twists and turns they will encounter on the job. Using scenarios and simulations, instructors can require students to write emails at different points in an email chain, developing appropriate strategy and content and deciding whom to CC.
 
You can read their entire article here. Learn other tips about creating effective emails in Chapter 3 of our textbook Writing and Speaking for Business.

-Bill Baker
 
Source: Business and Professional Communication Quarterly
 
Image by William Iven  

—Matias, a retail store manager, must tell his employees that store hours will be extended one additional hour into the evening.
—James, a customer service manager, has to deny a customer’s request for a refund.
—Heidi, a personnel manager, needs to document in an email why a subordinate is being put on probation.
 
Each of these situations involves giving bad news, while still attempting to retain goodwill with the person receiving the news. Sooner or later, everyone in positions of responsibility has to give bad news, which is rarely a pleasant task. There’s no one right way that works in every situation, but here are a few tips that can help.
 
Start by completing a CAPS planning process, ultimately selecting appropriate communication strategies.
 
Context analysis: Identify the factors that make this bad-news message necessary. What is your current relationship with the person? Is it a positive, neutral, or negative relationship? What would you like your future relationship to be like? What is needed to move your relationship to the desired level? Is the message recipient inside or outside your organization? If inside, remember that you’ll have to work with this person in the future.
 
Audience analysis: Look at the situation through their eyes. Try to comprehend how the bad news will affect them. Then sincerely try to minimize the negative effect of the bad news.
 
Purpose: Clarify the purposes of your message—to inform, to persuade, and to strive to build, maintain, or strengthen trust. Decide on what you think would be the ideal outcome of your message.
 
Strategy: Take steps to achieve the ideal outcome. Consider using the following four strategies—provide good reasoning, use an appropriate psychological approach, provide options as appropriate, and use appropriate wording
 
1. Provide good reasoning. Ideally, you want the readers of your negative messages to agree that you are justified in your reasoning. Therefore, be sure to have good reasons, whether financial, legal, ethical, or otherwise. Then clearly explain your reasoning in the most persuasive way possible.
 
Example: “With more daylight during the summer evenings, more customers are shopping later, so we need to keep our stores open longer to meet their needs.”
 
Regardless of your reasoning, people are still receiving bad news, which they won’t be happy about. But if you can convince them that you used solid reasoning in arriving at your decision, that will usually help soften the blow.
 
You might not feel a need to cite all the reasons for your decisions, but make sure to include the reasons that are most persuasive. For instance, your main motive for terminating someone might be their negative attitude, but because negative attitude is so difficult to measure or quantify, you might just cite discuss their substandard customer service ratings as the reason for your decision.
 
In your reasoning, include any benefits coming from your decision.
 
Example: “This policy enables us to maintain our low prices, which provide benefits for you and all of our customers.”
 
2. Use an appropriate approach. If the impact on the audience is going to be minor, you can take a more direct approach. But if the impact will be major, an indirect approach will usually be best. With a direct approach, give the negative news at or near the beginning, followed by the reasons for the bad news.
 
Example: “I’m sorry to have to deny your request for a replacement of your Columbia hiking shoes. These shoes come with a full-refund policy if the shoes are returned in like-new condition within 30 days. As we analyzed your purchase of these shoes, we found that the shoes were returned three months after purchase, not within the 30-day required refund period.”
 
With an indirect approach, give the reasons for the bad news, followed by the bad news.
 
Example: “Thanks for your request for a refund on your Columbia hiking shoes. These shoes come with a full-refund policy if the shoes are returned in like-new condition within 30 days. As we analyzed your purchase of these shoes, we found that the shoes were returned three months after purchase, not within the 30-day required refund period. Therefore, we are unable to give a refund.”
 
To de-emphasize the bad news, you can also embed it in the middle of a paragraph. For example, begin the paragraph with the reasons for the bad news, followed by the bad news, followed by other information that softens the blow.
 
Example: “These shoes come with a full-refund policy if the shoes are returned in like-new condition within 30 days. Because the shoes were returned after the 30-day required refund period, a full refund can’t be given. However, we are sending you a 30 percent coupon that you can use toward the purchase of another pair of shoes.”
 
3. Provide options. When giving bad news, try to find something positive to offer the person.
 
Example: “I’ll be happy to give you time off to attend our monthly two-day customer-service training.”
 
Also explain other actions the readers might take to minimize or reverse the negative situation, such as, “You can find additional online customer-service training to help improve your ratings.”
 
4. Choose appropriate words. As you give bad news, minimize the use of negative words, such as won’t, can’t, and didn’t. Instead, use more neutral or positive words. For example, instead of saying, “We can’t give you a refund,” you might say, “If the shoes had been returned within the 30-day period, we would have been able to grant your refund request.”
 
Also, you can use passive-voice sentence construction, instead of active voice, in conveying the bad news. Don’t say, “Because of your 2.6 customer service rating, I can’t give you a ‘Satisfactory” review.” But rather say, “Because of your 2.6 customer service rating, a ‘Satisfactory’ review can’t be given.”
 
The foregoing tips are proven methods for dealing with delivering bad news, whether in face-to-face situations or in writing. As you apply these methods, you’ll find that both your confidence and your effectiveness will increase.

​–Bill Baker

Almost any good book on writing will include a section on composing paragraphs, telling the importance of five factors: topic sentences, coherence, unity, appropriate length, and proper development. Most students can understand these five aspects of good paragraphs, but remembering the list is more challenging—until now.
 
Introducing . . . CLOUD.
 
The letters in CLOUD stand for Coherence, Length, Organization, Unity, and Development. Using the CLOUD framework, you can easily remember the five critical attributes of good paragraphs. Let’s review each of these below.
 
C is for Coherence
Make sure sentences flow logically from one sentence to the next. Coherence is achieved through systematic progression from one related idea to the next.
 
In addition to logical coherence, be sure your sentences have appropriate cohesion. Whereas coherence refers to the logical and rational interconnection of ideas, cohesion focuses on specific words that clarify the relationships among the ideas. Cohesion words can occur both within and between ideas. The following samples show different types of cohesion words.

• Addition: In addition, she is an LPN. Further, she has six years of experience.
• Comparison: Similarly, Gavin also worked as a systems engineer at A & B, Inc.
• Consequence: Because his father passed away on Sunday, he will not be traveling with us to New York.
• Condition: If we can get the Williams contract, then we’ll gain a greater foothold in the market.
• Example: For instance, she received a recommendation letter from the company president.
• Forecasting: Her outstanding education is complemented by the following three key experiences.
• Numeration: First, announce the change. Second, discuss its benefits. Third, ask for feedback.
• Place: At the conference in Raleigh, we can review your redesign plans.
• Time: Later, we’ll go to dinner.

 
L is for Length
Especially regarding paragraphs in the body of a document, avoid writing paragraphs that are so long that they look difficult to read. Many people suggest line counting as a way to determine maximum paragraph length, such as five or six lines for short messages or eight or nine lines for long reports. Perhaps a more reliable method is to just trust your eyes—if a paragraph looks long and uninviting to read, it is too long! When you encounter a paragraph that is too long, find the most logical breaking point (where the topic changes) and divide the paragraph in two, or perhaps even three.
 
And remember—sometimes a one-sentence paragraph is best!
 
O is for Organization
Generally use a direct approach in paragraphs, with a topic sentence leading the way. The topic sentence serves as a mini-agenda, or forecasting statement, for the paragraph. Feel free to also add a summarizing sentence at the end of the paragraph as appropriate. To check your document for direct-paragraph organization, skim through the document and read only the first sentence of each paragraph. As you do this, see if you obtain enough of the critical information to understand generally what the document is about. If you don’t understand, go back and write more descriptive topic sentences for each paragraph. Because many people read in detail only the first few lines of a document and then just skim the rest of the message, good topic sentences are critical.
 
U is for Unity
Once you have a topic sentence in place, ensure that all subsequent sentences in the paragraph have unity; i.e., each sentence should refer to the content introduced in the topic sentence. For example, if the topic sentence is about vacation days, the paragraph content should be about vacation days. However, if the topic sentence includes vacation days and sick days, the subsequent sentences should discuss both vacation days and sick days.
 
D is for Development
Be sure to give adequate information to support, or develop, the topic sentence. You can develop the main point of a paragraph in many ways, as shown in the following examples.

• Applications: “You could use this method in a variety of situations, including . . .”
• Evaluations: “Let’s compare the two approaches side by side to see which one . . .”
• Examples: “For example, last week two employees complained about . . .”
• Explanations: “We first observed a 46 percent decline in X; then we noticed a large decrease in Y. Therefore, we concluded that . . .”
• Testimonials: “The head of our main manufacturing operation says that . . .”

 
Now that you have a basic understanding of CLOUD, test your ability to use CLOUD as you read the two following paragraphs. Identify the specific CLOUD strengths and weaknesses in each.

1. Kerry’s work has been a problem ever since he was hired. I have talked with him on three different occasions about the need to improve, but nothing has happened. I plan to let him go on July 11. His work affects at least a dozen other employees. His performance record and my notes are attached.
2. I have decided to terminate Kerry’s employment, effective July 11. The main reason for this decision is due to his lack of meeting project milestones in his programming work. These missed deadlines cause delays for at least a dozen other employees working on the projects. I have talked with Kerry on three separate occasions about the need to manage is work more efficiently, but he has shown no improvement. Kerry’s performance record and the documentation of my interviews are attached.

 
You probably noticed that the first paragraph fails three of the five paragraph tests. To its credit, it is not too long and it does have unity, but it has problems with organization, coherence, and development. For example, it does not begin with a good topic sentence (the idea that Kerry is being fired). It also bounces from one idea to the next and reflects a lack of coherence and cohesion. Further, it fails to develop the case for Kerry being fired.
 
The second paragraph reflects good strength in all five paragraph standards. It begins with the main point, achieves unity by sticking with the topic of discussion, moves logically through the reasoning behind the decision, gives sufficient detail to understand the reasoning behind the decision to terminate, and avoids excessive length.
 
In addition to using CLOUD to help with composition, you can use it to guide your review of completed paragraphs. For instance, a colleague once said to me, “I can sense poor writing when I see it, but I don’t know how to give feedback for fixing the problems.” Using CLOUD as a feedback framework could be a tremendous help to this colleague.
 
CLOUD is a great tool both for writing and for giving feedback on the writing of others. For example, if you are creating a blog, you can use CLOUD during the composition process. If you’re reviewing an important email written by a colleague or subordinate, you can use CLOUD as a framework for giving feedback.
 
Memorize the CLOUD framework—Coherence, Length, Organization, Unity, Development—and try it on a few paragraphs. As you gain confidence in its use, I think you’ll like it.

-Bill Baker