Tech-savvy tools to tame your email monster

Email can be the bane of our existence.

For freelance language professionals, it’s almost impossible to run a business without it. Sending quotations and projects. Accepting assignments. Managing receipts. 

Sometimes, it can all feel overwhelming. Like there’s a monster in your inbox that keeps you from getting actual work done!

I designed the Tame your email monster challenge for the techforword insiders community to help fellow professionals like you tackle the overwhelm and develop strategies and habits for efficient email management. 

This column covers one of the nine steps that make up the challenge. Read on to discover my favorite tech tips to write faster and begin taming your email monster.

Learn keyboard shortcuts

Email is all about writing.

Teach yourself the essential keyboard shortcuts to write efficiently. There’s a bit of a learning curve, but I promise you: the time they save really adds up!

Here’s a list of my favorites for dealing with text on Mac and Windows:

Excerpted from the February 2022 techforword insiders webinar, “Time-saving tricks for translators and ‘terps,” with guest expert Nora Díaz - a real productivity rock star!

Next, get acquainted with shortcuts for managing email. You shouldn’t need to take your hands off the keyboard to compose or send a message, mark an email as read or unread, or archive or delete it! ⌨️

Email shortcuts vary based on your operating system and email app. Check out these recommendations for Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo, and Apple Mail. 

(Pro tip: Need to memorize a new shortcut? Write it on a sticky note and place it next to your monitor. 😉)

Set up text replacement

You probably type out your email address, phone number, and mailing address all the time - whether you’re buying something online or sharing your address with a friend who’s coming to visit.

Text replacement - also known as text snippets or text expansion - lets you create custom shortcuts for anything you type more than once or twice.

And emails are packed with this kind of boilerplate language:

“Thank you for your email, and apologies for not responding sooner.”

“Attached please find my translation.  I look forward to continuing to collaborate in the future.”

“Unfortunately, I am not available to accept this assignment. However, should you need interpreting services from Spanish, French, Italian, Catalan or Portuguese to English, please feel free to contact me.”

Sure, you could type these out all the time. But why would you? Instead, download the free Phrase Express text expansion program (for Mac, Windows or iOS) and add in the boilerplate sentences you regularly write in emails.

Pair them with abbreviations that work well for you. For example, I use “tx” for “Thank you for contacting me” and “brb” for my two-sentence message about not being available to take on projects at the moment.

If you’re an insiders member, you’ll find bonus videos about how to use Phrase Express to create snippets, select a snippet from a list, and use auto-complete with the replay of our “Time-saving tricks for translators and ‘terps” webinar.

Create templates and canned responses

Here’s an email I write regularly:

Dear CLIENT,

Attached please find my translation of this project.

I look forward to receiving your feedback on it, and would be happy to answer any questions you have.

Thanks again for entrusting me with this project. I look forward to continuing to work together in the future.

Best wishes,

Josh

Although I could set up each of these phrases as a text expansion, I’ll save even more time if I create an email template or canned response. 

Good news: Phrase Express works great for templates and canned responses. (And many email apps like Outlook, Apple Mail and Gmail offer templates, too. 💪)

Use a spelling and grammar checker

As language professionals, we’re judged on our writing - including emails in foreign languages.

And while Grammarly is popular, it only “knows” English.

What we need is a tool that works in all of your languages and runs right in your email app.

I strongly recommend LanguageTool, which supports 30+ languages. 

In addition to catching embarrassing typos, it offers helpful writing and grammar tips. My writing has improved by leaps and bounds since I started using LanguageTool. 🤩  

👉 Check out my full review of LanguageTool

Smart Compose: Awesome or creepy?

If you're a Gmail user, you may have heard of Smart Compose, which uses machine learning to complete your sentences as you type.

Start writing, and Gmail autocompletes the rest of the sentence. Like what you see? Hit tab to accept the suggestion. (Or swipe to accept a suggestion on a smartphone or tablet.)

I have mixed feelings about Smart Compose. It can save tons of time, but I'm hesitant about Google’s computers gobbling up my email for machine learning. Critics also note that Smart Compose messages may seem less personal.

Smart Compose does offer the possibility to turn on custom suggestions based on your writing style - so if you change Google’s boilerplate language, Smart Compose will start to propose your style in the future.

Want to read more about Smart Compose? Check out this Buzzfeed article.

Start right now

Do you have thousands of unread emails in your inbox? 

I hate to break it to you, but it’ll take more than this column to tame that email monster. 

The secret to mastering email - and pretty much everything we teach at techforword - is to tackle one thing at a time.

And that’s what this column tries to help you do. So what are you waiting for? Roll up your sleeves and start today!

Are you overwhelmed by email?

Join the insiders for the challenge and “Tame your email monster” now!

tfw.rocks/EmailChallenge 👈