Just don’t hit Send

Sometimes you just wish you hadn’t. And with emails, we all wish we hadn’t fairly often. Here are some examples of emails that were sent before they were proofread*.

“Thanks a lot, I go tit.”
I’ll start with one of my own. A simple typo, this one was pretty confusing to the recipient – luckily, the email was internal.

“Wow, that was a super-seedy reply.”
This is another one of mine. One missed letter, one complete change of meaning and one rather offended reader.

“I am afraid I started you off on the wrong food, and I am very sorry for it.”
This wasn’t from my mother – it was a failed attempt at a complicated English idiom.

“Please can you translate this greeting massage?”
That’s not an easy task – how do you translate a massage into English?

“It’s essential that we don’t have any buckle necks.”
I’ve heard of bottlenecks, but a buckle neck? Must be a new type of shirt collar.

“The text has to appeal directly to our costumers.”
As this wasn’t written by a theater company, we assumed they meant customers.

---

Tip 1: reread the email before you send
This may seem obvious, but often we all forget to do it. Ideally, after you’ve finished the email, you should do something else for at least a few minutes. Then reread it – you’ll be amazed how many errors you spot. Most email programs now also include a spell-checker, so make sure you run that, too.

Tip 2: give yourself a few minutes
Set your email to send and receive every five or ten minutes. That way, you’ve usually got a few minutes to rethink what you’ve written before any errors find their way into someone else’s inbox.

Tip 3: save the ‘To’ field until last
Only put the address of the recipient in at the last minute, so you can’t accidentally fire off the email until it’s 100% done.

Tip 4: don’t write drunk
It never helps.

---

*These are all real examples that have found their way into our inboxes. In some cases, we’ve changed the context to protect the culprit. If you’ve sent us a blooper email that wasn’t included in this list, let us know and we’ll make sure to include it next time. 

---

These bloopers were compiled by our Norwegian correspondent, Dan Elloway.