Tips for writing polite and professional emails in German

When writing polite and professional emails in German, it is important to pay attention to several key aspects:

1. Formal Address: Use the formal “Sie” form for addressing the recipient unless you know them well and have an informal relationship. Start with a respectful greeting such as Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren (Dear Sir or Madam) or Sehr geehrte Frau/Herr (Dear Ms./Mr.) followed by the last name.

2. Polite openings and closings: Use polite standard phrases to open and close your email. For example, opening with Ich hoffe, es geht Ihnen gut (I hope you are well) or similar expressions, and closing with Mit freundlichen Grüßen (With kind regards) or Beste Grüße (Best regards) convey respect and professionalism.

3. Clear and concise language: Be direct but polite in the content of your email. Avoid overly complex sentences to ensure clarity. Use formal vocabulary and avoid slang or colloquial expressions.

4. Structured format: Organize your email with a clear introduction, main body, and conclusion. Bullet points or numbered lists can help make information more digestible.

5. Polite requests and questions: Use conditional forms like Könnten Sie bitte… (Could you please…) or Würden Sie so freundlich sein… (Would you be so kind…) for requests.

6. Proofread: Check spelling, grammar, and punctuation carefully to maintain professionalism.

By following these tips, you can write emails in German that are polite, clear, and professional, suitable for business or formal communication contexts. ^{1, 13}

References

• Formal e-mails

• A New Aligned Simple German Corpus

• Acquiring a Formality-Informed Lexical Resource for Style Analysis

• Language Models for German Text Simplification: Overcoming Parallel Data Scarcity through Style-specific Pre-training

• MaiBaam Annotation Guidelines

• Facilitating the Communication of Politeness through Fine-Grained Paraphrasing

• Managing in Writing: Recommendations from Textual Patterns in Managers’ Email Communication

• Composing Effective and Efficient E-mails: A Primer for Pharmacy Practitioners

• Comparing Styles across Languages: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Politeness

• Enabling fast and correct typing in ‘Leichte Sprache’ (Easy Language)

• Linguistic Politeness and Greeting Rituals in German-speaking Switzerland

• Forms of Address as Cross-Cultural Code-Switching: The Case of German and Danish in Higher Education

• «Hallöchen Herr Professor!»: Überlegungen zur Normierungsproblematik in der E-Mail-Kommunikation am Beispiel des Hochschulkontextes