1、Subject:Scheduled Production Environment for SaturdayOctober 31Dear Partners,The companys Production environment will be taken offline on Saturday , Oct 31 2010 for a scheduled maintenance . A complete list of the changes being made in this maintenance can be found at following URLDate :Saturday , O
2、ct.31,2010Time :2300hrs2400hrsDuration:1 hourPurpose:Software UpgradesPlease note that during this maintenance period , our companys Customer Center will be offline.If you require additional details regarding this maintenance, please contact us via email atBest Regards ,Tom MooreCustomer ServiceIf y
3、oure reading this, theres a good chance that you have an email account. You may well have several perhaps separate accounts for professional and personal contacts.如果你正在阅读这篇文章，你肯定有一个或若干个甚至是不同帐号的私人或办公邮箱。Its easy to assume that we know how to use email effectively: its been around for long enough. But
4、if you find yourself struggling to communicate effectively by email, these six tips should help:邮件这样的沟通方式早已经渗入到了我们的生活工作中，因此可以说大多数人都能有效地使用邮件与他人交流。但如果你发现自己还没做得足够有效，我想以下这六点可以帮到你：1. Start With an Appropriate Salutation邮件开头称呼要恰当：Some people jump straight into the text of an email without so much as a “hi
5、”. Its polite to add a salutation, just as you would with a letter. That might look like:有些人写邮件不喜欢加称呼，甚至连简单的“你好”都忽略，直接开始正文内容。孰不知就像在传统的信件上一样，写上称呼是一种礼貌的象征。称呼可以这样写：#Dear Sir/Madam 亲爱的先生/女士#Dear Mr. Johnson 亲爱的约翰逊先生#Hi Sue 苏，你好#Hello Fred 你好，福瑞德Your salutation needs to be appropriate. If youre writing t
6、o a prospective employer, “Dear Mr. Johnson” is probably the best way to go. “Hi Bob” is going to look unprofessional.称呼必须恰当。若邮件对象是你未来的上司，“亲爱的约翰先生”这样的称呼应该为最得体的。像“你好，鲍勃”更适用于随意的场合。But dont assume that formality is always the right answer. If youre writing to a friend of a friend, using “Dear” plus the
7、ir surname is going to seem oddly stilted.那么，是不是正式的用语就万能呢？绝对不是。若你给你朋友的朋友写邮件，那用“亲爱的+姓”就显得异常别扭。If in doubt, “Dear first name” will usually work just fine.当你判断不出哪种场合该用什么称呼合适，你可以使用“亲爱的+名”来应付所有情况。2. Get Straight to the Point直奔主题Your correspondent wont want to wade through paragraphs of waffle so get stra
8、ight to the point. If youre writing to someone out of the blue, dont give them your life story before you make a request.相信阅读你邮件的人不会愿意仔细浏览你那空洞无聊的长篇大论，所以你需要直奔主题。如果你想写封邮件安慰某个心灵受伤的朋友，开头先把你的建议亮出来，然后再用你的亲身经历来辅助说明。Getting straight to the point might mean that the first line of your email （after the saluta
9、tion） looks something like this:直奔主题意味着邮件内容的第一行应该是这样：#Im working on an article about Acme Widgets for XYZ publication, and wondered if you had a few minutes to answer the following three questions.我现在正在写一篇要交给某某出版社关于极致控件的文章，不知道您有没有时间回答3个问题呢？#Could you supply me with a quote for the following project?
10、可否对下面的设计项目进行引证？#Id like to discuss the revisions with you. Would Tuesday at 2pm be a good time?我想和你谈谈修订的事。这周二下午两点您有空吗？#Ive attached the documents you requested at our meeting yesterday.昨天会议上您要求的文件已附上，请查收。You may well need to include more details, but if you put the important point up front, your ema
11、il is more likely to get a timely response. If your question comes too far down, the recipient may not even realise that you need a reply.当然，你需要再增加更多的细节内容。若将邮件重点放到内容的开头，你将收到更加及时的回复信息。如果你的问题在邮件后头，收信人可能都不会意识到你在等他回复。3. Keep it Short内容言简意赅Try to keep your email as short as possible. Make the paragraphs
12、short, too long paragraphs can be difficult to read and take in.尽可能将你的邮件内容写得简单明了。文章太长不易阅读和吸收。Do make sure you give enough information for your correspondent to be able to make a decision, if thats required. You might find that its best to offer this as an attachment youll have more flexibility over
13、formatting, and your correspondent can print out the attachment easily.若对方需要通过你的邮件来做决策，那你一定要在邮件中将相关信息写完整。为了能更灵活地排版，你可以把这些信息作成附件形式，以方便对方将其打印出来。4. Use Numbered Points将内容编号If youve got several questions or points to make, its very helpful to number them. This makes it easy for the other person to respo
14、nd to each one, especially if some just require a yes/no response or a single word answer. For instance:对于那些为了咨询或提供各种问题的邮件，最好将问题一点一点的列举出来，以便于他人对每个问题作答，尤其当某些人更倾向于对问题只回答“是”和“否”的时候。例如：#Could you let me know:能否告知：#1. How much it would cost for the website design1. 网站设计费用#2. How much for the website desi
15、gn plus a tri-fold brochure2. 网页设计加一份三页宣传册的费用#3. Whether you could complete #2 by the end of April3. 您能否在四月底完成第二点所述工作？Its also useful to list your questions or points as bullets in this way; if you write a single paragraph, some of your questions might get missed.将你的问题或观点用图标的方式罗列出来是很实用的，倘若你用一段话将几个点全
16、部涵盖，那对方有可能会漏看其中的几点。5. Re-read and Use Spell-Check重新阅读一遍，校对拼写错误A typo or spelling mistake can turn one word into an entirely different one. If youre using email in a professional capacity, that mistake could be embarrassing or even offensive. It might alter the whole meaning of your email: a missing
17、“not”, for instance, could potentially cause problems.排版或拼写错误有时能导致对一个单词的误解。尤其当你用邮件来沟通专业性内容时，这样的错误就很尴尬，甚至有些失礼。它可能改变你整个邮件的意思。比如：少写了个“不”，就可能会引起某些问题。Spell-check should help you avoid any silly mistakes but use your eyes and brain too. There are plenty of words that spell-check wont pick up. If youre ema
18、iling from a device with predictive text and an auto-correct feature, make sure you always re-read what youve typed.因此检查拼写将避免你犯这些低级错误，但这里强调不仅仅用眼睛检查，还得用大脑思考。有些错误不一定能轻易检查出来。如果你的邮件系统有字句联想功能和自动纠错功能，一定要把写出来的内容再通读检查一遍。6. Make Your Signature Useful充分利用邮件签名Do you have an email signature? （Thats the text tha
19、t appears automatically at the bottom of your email.） Some people dont use one at all; others have a funny quote or favorite saying.你设置过邮件签名吗（它将会在你每次邮件内容的下方自动生成）？有些人从来都没有使用过它，但我们也看过一些非常有意思和哲理的签名。Whether youre using email for professional or personal reasons, make your signature useful for both you a
20、nd your recipient. That might mean:无论你是为了工作还是私人聊天，加注签名对你和邮件接收者都有好处，因为这意味着可以：Giving the link to your website加上你的网页链接Including your work address and/or phone number写上你的工作地址或电话号码Adding links to your social media accounts注上你的社会媒体工具帐号（例如博客，微博，论坛）Putting in a line to promote your recent book / blog / prod
21、uct宣传你最新的书籍，博文或产品If your email provider allows it, you may even want to create several signatures to use for different purposes （e.g. one for emailing friends, one for new business contacts）.有些邮箱甚至还提供用户根据不同目的设计不同签名的服务（比如：一个对朋友使用，一个对新结识的企业伙伴使用）。For the past 18 months or so, Ive been sending a monthly
22、 email out to a list of a few thousand people （who voluntarily gave me their addresses!） My open rate is somewhere between 35 percent and 44 percent.在过去的18个里，我每个月给那些自愿给我邮件地址的人发邮件，大概每月要发几千封邮件。这些邮件的打开率大概在35%到44%之间。This past month, I had a realization: the highest open rates tended to occur during the
23、months that I sent the email on a Sunday afternoon.上个月我发现：在我发送邮件的几个月里，在周日下午发送出的邮件是打开率最高的。This did not seem intuitive to me. Indeed, Id actually avoided sending the email on weekends because I thought it would lower the open rate. Most of us try to be places other than our desks on Sundays, and doing
24、 things that dont involve email.一开始我并没有想过会是这样的结果。事实上，我会避免在周末发送邮件，因为我认为周末的邮件阅读率不会高。星期天大多数人都不会选择待在书桌前办公，而是去做些其他的事情，当然不包括查看邮件。But after talking with Alex Moore, CEO of Baydin, an email management service, I started to think about what was going on. Moore told me that emails sent from 6 a.m. to 7 a.m. a
25、re about three times more likely to be opened than emails sent at 4 p.m.但是在和电子邮件管理服务公司Baydin的行政总裁Alex Moore谈过之后，我开始思考到底发生了什么事。Moore 告诉我，早晨6-7点发出的电子邮件，得到阅读的可能性是下午4点发出的邮件的三倍以上。Many of us know that we should never check email in the morning. Yet we do. We show up at our workplaces, grab our coffee, and
26、 start pecking away at our inboxes, starting with the first unopened emails - those sent at 6 a.m. or so. Any email sent then is toward the top of the pile, says Moore, so it gets read.许多人都知道这句话“绝对不要在早晨查看电子邮件”。但事实上我们一直都在这么做。我们出现在工作的地方，手拿咖啡杯，开始查看收件箱，点开第一封没打开的邮件那些早晨6点左右发送的邮件。Moore说，在这个时间发送的任何邮件都有可能“排在
27、未读邮件列表的前列”，因此这些邮件更有可能被阅读。By the end of the day, though, any given email gets buried in an avalanche of other emails. People are triaging and trying to get out the door and anything marginal or not related to the task at hand will just get deleted or ignored. Thats why morning emails work so well.而在一
28、天结束的时候，任何邮件都将被其他邮件给沉下去。人们会权衡轻重，把那些不重要的、或与当前任务无关的邮件删除或忽略。这就是为什么早晨发邮件会很有效的原因了。Which makes sense - but doesnt explain what I was finding. Why was Sunday afternoon working so well for me?这种说法有一定的道理，但还是不能解释我的发现，那就是为什么周日下午发送邮件会效果特别好呢？It turns out that in the smartphone era, many people do check email on S
29、undays. Any resolve to stay out of the inbox ends with Saturday. Sitting in the bleachers at a soccer game, or waiting for a game to come on, or puttering around the house, theyre somewhat bored, and willing to do something that seems semi-productive. Since not too many messages come in on Sunday, y
30、ours might get read. And as for people who dont check email on Sunday? A 4 p.m. Sunday email looks a lot like a 6 a.m. Monday email from that perspective. Theyre both at the top of the pile.原因应该是：在智能手机的时代，许多人会在星期天查看邮件。任何远离电子邮件的措施，在星期六就结束了。坐在看台上，等待足球赛开始，或者在屋子里闲逛，人们有时候会感到无聊，就想做点有意义的事情。既然星期天没有太多的新消息，那么你的邮件就很有可能被打开阅读了。对于在星期天不看邮件的人来说，从某种角度来看，星期天下午4点发的邮件看起来很像星期一早晨6点发出的邮件，因此也将被排在邮件列表的顶端。So if you want an email to get read, send it Sunday afternoon or early in the morning.所以如果你想让人读到你的邮件，那就在周日下午或清晨发送吧。1.发传真必备第一句：你能把它传真给我吗经典表达：Could you please fax the invoice/invitat
