Professional Email Writing: One Email, One Job. Most People Give It Three.

Most professional emails fail not because they are badly written but because they are trying to do too many things at once. Here is the discipline that fixes almost every email problem.

Most professional email problems are not writing problems. They are thinking problems that show up in the writing. The email that is too long is too long because the writer has not decided what it is for. The email that gets no response is being ignored because the reader cannot immediately identify what they are being asked to do. The email that creates confusion is creating confusion because the writer used the email to work out their thinking rather than to communicate the conclusion of it. These are not problems that better vocabulary or cleaner sentences will fix. They are problems that a single discipline will fix: deciding, before you write the first word, what the one job of this email is.

The One Job Principle

Every professional email has one job. Not three jobs, not one main job and two secondary ones. One job. The job is either to inform the reader of something specific, to request something specific, or to confirm something specific. One of those three. One email, one job. The test is simple. Before you write a single word, answer this question in one sentence: what is the one thing I need the reader to do or know after reading this email? If you cannot answer that in one sentence, you are not ready to write the email.

Subject Line First

The subject line is not a label for the email. It is a commitment to the reader about what the email contains and what it requires from them. A subject line that says “Follow up” tells the reader nothing. A subject line that says “Interview debrief, two questions before Friday” tells the reader what the email is about, what it requires, and by when. In my English Writing with Multimedia course at Hanyang, I ask students to write their email subject line before writing the body, because it forces them to commit to the one job principle before they start. If the subject line requires two sentences to cover everything the email contains, the email is doing more than one job.

The Structure That Works

The email structure that consistently produces the clearest professional communication has three components. The context sentence: one sentence of relevant background that tells the reader why this email is arriving now. Not three paragraphs of history. One sentence. The core: the actual job of the email, stated directly, in the first three lines where the reader’s attention is highest. And the action or close: what happens next, stated clearly. “Can you reply with your approval by end of day Thursday?” “No action needed, just wanted to keep you informed.” The reader knows exactly what to do when they finish reading. That is the whole email.

The Korean Professional Email Context

Professional email in Korean corporate culture carries additional considerations around register, honorifics, and the relationship between sender and recipient that most cross-cultural training covers only superficially. The 체면 (chemyeon) dimension means that how you frame a request, and particularly any email carrying a critical or challenging message, carries social weight beyond the content itself. An email that would read as appropriately direct in a North American context may read as abrupt in a Korean corporate context. The one job principle still applies. The register in which that job is communicated requires its own calibration. A warm, appropriately deferential email with a clear, specific ask at its centre is the target.

→ The Writing Lab covers the mechanics of professional communication including email, reports, and business writing. If you want to develop your team’s written communication or work on your own professional writing voice, the careercomms.com/work-with-me/“>Work With Me page covers what that engagement looks like.