Whether you're emailing a prospective employer about a new job or a colleague in a senior position at work, there's nothing worse than sending a quickly-typed email only to later realise how many spelling, grammatical and punctuation mistakes you successfully managed to fit into one email.
The only thing you actually got right is your name. Congrats.
As a generation of millennials who scroll through social media at lightning speed, rely on autocorrect to make our WhatsApp messages legible and type up brief emails with intermittent wifi on public transport, we have a tendency to become complacent about the art of communication.
However, a new study by the browser extension Grammarly has found the answer to our email woes and discovered the ideal time to reply to the torrent of messages clogging up our inboxes.
According to Grammarly – an online proofreading tool – the most opportune time to answer emails is between the hours of 1 and 5pm.
The study looked at data on words that needed to be corrected and at what time, and found that emails written from 1-5pm only contained 3.7 errors per 100 words.
Meanwhile, emails sent in the morning contained on average 11.8 mistakes per 100 words while those fired off late at night showed a whopping 14.3 errors.
So, the next time you're thinking of replying to an email from the comfort of your own bed first thing in the morning or while making dinner this evening, you might want to think twice before hitting 'send'.
Katie O'Malley is the Site Director on ELLE UK. On a daily basis you’ll find Katie managing all digital workflow, editing site, video and newsletter content, liaising with commercial and sales teams on new partnerships and deals (eg Nike, Tiffany & Co., Cartier etc), implementing new digital strategies and compiling in-depth data traffic, SEO and ecomm reports. In addition to appearing on the radio and on TV, as well as interviewing everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Rishi Sunak PM, Katie enjoys writing about lifestyle, culture, wellness, fitness, fashion, and more.
