I hope this finds you well.

Best.

May the road rise up to meet you. May the wind always be at your back. May the sun shine warm upon your face, and rains fall soft upon your fields.

Meaningless, the lot of them.

Emails are a necessary evil, and they sure beat sitting in a meeting that could easily have been avoided if folks at the top didn’t need a good ego stroking.

That being said there’s a real disconnect these days between sender and receiver, and the everyday platitudes we use as email staples have become somewhat farcical along the way.

Fast Company have put together their list of phrases you really should avoid when looking to initiate a (business) relationship, phrases you should avoid to ensure the receiver of said email doesn’t want to reach through the screen and land a knuckle sandwich before lunch.

They’ve turned to their expert Geoffrey James, so let’s see what he has to say:

1) “I HOPE YOU ARE WELL.”

So how can we do better than pretending to care about someone? Maybe by actually caring, actually getting to know the other person. Speaking to a journalist, PR folks that have just asked me to have a cup of coffee with them have been able to form an actual human bond rather than a forced relatedness.

2) “I THOUGHT I WOULD REACH OUT.”

“That expression—which has suddenly gotten popular—always makes me imagine a baby reaching out of a stroller,” James writes.

And we don’t want to infantalize ourselves. So instead of leaning on this passive, vacuous construction, we can simply say what we mean to say about the topic and how it relates to the recipient.

Your email makes me want to reach out – in anger. Here’s hoping your co-workers share your sentiment when you’re hauled before HR.

3) “CAN I PICK YOUR BRAIN?”

…asking if you can pick someone’s brain is asking for someone’s time without offering anything in return.

What to do instead? Blank says to promise sharing an insight you’ve had along the way, which makes the conversation more of a two-way street.

There are a few more, so brush up on your email lingo HERE.

We’re not done yet, though, because we’re going to unpack ‘I hope you’re well’ further with the help of NY Mag. As you’re about to find out, it’s not a term that sits well with the writer:

“I hope you’re well” is a scourge on email correspondence, a hollow greeting that has come to mean nothing. I’d sooner write the first line of Finnegan’s Wake backwards and in Pig Latin than “I hope you’re well”…

While looking back through emails I’d sent to close friends and loved ones, I couldn’t find a single “I hope you’re well,” providing further evidence that its use is one clear-cut way to prove you couldn’t give a shit about the person you are emailing. From now on, when you are sitting down to write a professional email, you have two options: Either say nothing at all and jump right into the subject of your email, or find something — literally anything — to prove that you are not a robot built for the mundane task of churning out rote correspondence…

The most important thing to do when writing an email to anyone — be it work correspondence or a love letter or a threat to your enemies — is to ask yourself, do you actually hope this person is well? If you do, then find some sincere way to say that instead of a bottled expression that has come to mean anything but…

And if the thought of leaving out any introductory pleasantry at all makes you uncomfortable, an exclamation point in your greeting should do the trick. It’s nearly as hollow as “I hope you’re well” but takes up less than half the space. Fun!

Have a great day further.

[sources:fastcompany&nymag]