Tutorial for Writing Professional Emails and Letters
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In engineering and science, emails and letters are often effective way to make specific requests, submit small changes to a job, and deliver specific information. Unlike telephone conversations, emails and letters present the audience with a legal contract that is dated and can support a claim in court. This section presents formats for emails and letters. In addition, this section provides a  sample résumé template.

Film 1. Overview of emails and cover letters.
Analysis of Audience, Purpose, and Occasion

Before you begin writing a professional email, you should analyze the constraints of audience, purpose, and occasion. As Film 2 discusses, when writing emails about a project, you often encounter different audiences who have decidedly different levels of familiarity with the project [1]. In addition, as Film 3 shows, the level of persuasion for the audience expected varies much among emails. Moreover, how an audience reads is important to consider (see Film 4). Provided here is a professional format for both an email and cover letter.

Film 2. Analyzing what the audience knows.


Film 4. Analyzing how the audience will read.

Film 3. Analyzing the audience's purpose for reading.
Organization of Emails and Letters

In a professional email, the style refers to the way that you communicate the content to the audience [1]. Professional emails have two important perspectives on style: organization and language. Presented in films 5-8 are the aspects of organization that most distinguish professional emails and cover letters.

Film 5. Subject Line.

Film 6. Beginning Paragraph.

Film 7. Middle Paragraphs.

Film 8. Ending Paragraph.
Seventeen Questions about
​Job Emails and Cover Letters
Language of Emails 

Language concerns the way that you write at the sentence level. Two important aspects are how precise and clear your sentences are. Films 10 and 11 discuss that issue. Because audiences expect emails to be short, another important aspect of language is being concise, which Film 12 discusses.

Film 9. Language: Being Precise and Clear in Professional Emails

Film 10. Language: Being Concise

Film 11. Controlling tone.

Film 12. Connecting Ideas in Paragraphs.