Something that may be difficult for non-native speakers to understand is the etiquette involved in email communications in English or with foreigners.

If you are writing to someone for the first time, then you should use formal style speech and writing patterns to begin with. In addressing your email, consider using proper honorific titles such as Ms. and Dr. and you should never use casual terms such as ‘mate’, ‘dood’ or ‘bro’ until you are good friends with someone.

After trading a few emails with the same person, it may be acceptable to become more casual in your writing. In order to save time some people will not address you, or even write their own name, but simply write a few words to answer or ask a question. Occasionally in email correct grammar and punctuation are also overlooked with examples being: using ‘i’ instead of ‘I’ and even ‘ur’ instead of ‘your’

Generally this is fine as both people gain an understanding of each others communication style, but unfortunately there are no rules that cover what is appropriate in email. Overall, just be careful to stay professional and if you are unsure, then stick to being formal and it may be best not to use emoticons such as :p L and J etc.

For most people their work email address is their name, which is easy and professional, however often we think up creative personal email addresses that reflect something about ourselves such as a hobby or personality trait. Unfortunately these types of addresses can create an improper impression of who you are and make you appear unprofessional.

Perhaps the best and easiest email is simply your name: firstname.lastname@yahoo.com

If this isn’t available try simple things like adding your favorite number or the city you live in:

gary-bremermann1970@hotmail.com or gary-in-tokyo@yahoo.com

Although making up strange email addresses may make you easier to remember, it may lead people to associate the image of the address with your personality or work ethic. Also, try to make it easy for people to contact you by not making your email address hard to read and full of punctuation marks or long sets of numbers etc. Some bad examples of email addresses are:

eating-icecream-with-pink-pandas@yahoo.com {-808(+-+)<gary>(~.~) -808-}@yahoo.com

Many people use multiple emails and it’s probably a good idea to create a new email account to use for your job search communications, while you have a special personal and interesting sounding email address for friends and family. Unfortunately there are no rules for this either - just be careful to be professional and consider what people will think of you.