You're not struggling with your job.
You're not struggling in meetings — even when you feel imposter syndrome creeping in.
You're not struggling on the worksite. That's your territory.
What sends you over the edge? (That idiom, by the way, means something pushes you to the point where you completely lose control — which feels appropriate here.)
It's writing emails. In the privacy of your office. On a blank page that just stares back at you.
I get it. I've been there.
I'm Olivia — civil engineer, certified English teacher, and the founder of Marcode. For the past five years, I've been working exclusively with engineers from across the world, helping them communicate clearly and confidently in international projects. And writing professional emails in English is one of the most common things they come to me for.
Not because they're not smart. They absolutely are. But because there is a huge difference between how you speak and how you write a professional email — and nobody ever actually teaches you this.
So here is the system I use with my engineering clients. Eight steps. No fluff.
Why Is Writing Professional Emails So Hard?
Email writing is hard for everyone, including native speakers. Even senior executives and confident presenters freeze when they open a blank email draft. Here's why:
- In spoken conversation, tone carries a lot of the meaning. In written English, a single word choice can make an email go from warm and professional to cold and abrupt — without you even realising it.
- Unlike speaking, writing invites overthinking. Without the natural back-and-forth of a conversation, you end up agonising over whether to use a period or an exclamation mark, what level of formality is right, whether your phrasing is too direct.
- And once you hit send, you can't take it back. That uncertainty stays with you.
For non-native English speakers on international teams, this is even harder — because the conventions aren't just about language. They're about culture, hierarchy, and unspoken rules that change depending on where your colleagues are from.
Already know why it's hard and just want a faster method? Jump to my quick-read companion piece:
→ How to Write Work Emails Faster — a simple structure you can use today.
A Personal Note on Why This System Exists
A while back, a young engineer sent me a message: "Can you teach me how to write English emails?"
That same month, another client asked: "Could you look at this really important email and help me make it better?"
Both engineers. Both skilled. Both stuck.
And I remembered — I had been exactly there.
When I was working as a civil engineer in Austria, I wrote business emails in German and English every day. It was automatic.
Then I moved to the Netherlands. I started my business. And the first time I sat down to reply to an inquiry, I froze. I stared at the screen and thought: How do I greet someone? How do I politely ask a question? How do I decline a meeting without sounding rude? How do I professionally tell someone to get lost?
I searched online for templates. Most of them were too informal, too old-fashioned, or written for a context that had nothing to do with engineering. So I built my own system.
And when I started working with engineers full-time, I discovered they were dealing with the same problems. That system became the foundation for what I now teach — and what I'm sharing with you here.
8 Steps to Writing Professional Emails in English
Step 1 — Read Emails You've Already Received
You've probably been receiving business emails in English for a while. Start treating them as study material.
When you read an email from a native-speaking colleague or client, ask yourself: What structure does it follow? How formal or informal is the tone? Are they using exclamation marks? What kind of phrasing do they use to make requests?
Keep a running list. Over time, patterns will emerge — and those patterns are your shortcut.
Step 2 — Default to Too Nice
Without vocal tone or facial expression, email is easy to misread. What feels neutral to you might land as cold or abrupt to your reader.
The fix: be warmer than you think you need to be.
Use conditional tenses ("Could you possibly…" instead of "Send me…"). Say please and thank you explicitly. If your native language is more direct than English — German, Dutch, Russian, many others — this step is especially important. You are not being weak. You are being clear about your intention, which is professional behaviour.
Step 3 — Keep It Simple
This is an email. Not a technical report. Not a specification document.
Use short sentences. Use common words. Avoid jargon unless you're certain your reader will understand it. If you find yourself writing a sentence that goes on for three lines, break it into two.
Your reader will understand you better. And you'll write faster.
Step 4 — Keep It Short
People don't have time to read long emails. You don't have time to write them.
Say what you need to say. Stop. Send.
If the email requires a long explanation, ask yourself: should this be a meeting instead?
Step 5 — Use Writing Tools (But Critically)
Tools like Grammarly or Hemingway can help you catch errors you'd otherwise miss — spelling, overly long sentences, passive voice overuse.
Use them as a second pair of eyes, not as the authority. Grammarly in particular will sometimes suggest changes that are grammatically correct but tonally off. If a suggestion doesn't sound like you, ignore it.
Step 5B — On Using AI to Write Your Emails
Yes, you can ask ChatGPT or Claude to write your email for you. A lot of engineers do.
And it works — up to a point.
The problem isn't the AI. The problem is the input. If you paste in a vague instruction like "write an email to my client about the delay," you'll get a vague email back. Technically correct. But generic in tone. Missing the context that actually matters: the relationship, the history, the level of formality your client expects, what you've already said, what you haven't.
AI tools are excellent at producing fluent English. They are not excellent at knowing your professional situation. That knowledge lives in your head, and getting it into the prompt is a skill in itself.
The good news: everything in this system — understanding your tone of voice, knowing your audience, keeping it clear and short — is exactly what makes a good AI prompt. Engineers who understand how professional emails work will always get better output from AI than engineers who don't. Garbage in, garbage out. You learned that one a long time ago.
So use the tools. Just bring your own brain to the table first.
Step 6 — Practice With Real Emails
When you learn conversational English, you practice it with another person. Do the same with email writing.
Take an email you've already received and rewrite it. Or find a colleague who communicates well in English and ask them to review your drafts occasionally. The feedback you get from real communication is faster than any course.
Step 7 — Learn the Cultural Conventions of Your Context
This one surprises people: email conventions change depending on the country, the company, and even the industry.
A US tech company might use informal fragments and first names from day one. A German engineering firm might expect formal salutations and full sentences. UK English often uses understatement where US English is direct. Australian English is more casual than either.
This gets even more layered when you're working across borders — if you regularly collaborate with international teams, the rules shift depending on who's in the thread. And communicating across cultures in writing is a skill in itself, because tone doesn't always travel well.
If you're switching between different contexts, pay attention to how people write to you first. That tells you what they expect back.
Step 8 — Build Your Own Template System
Most emails in a professional environment are not creative. Once you've been writing them for a while, you'll notice they follow the same patterns. And here's the thing — even when you use AI to help you write them, the patterns stay exactly the same. That's not a coincidence. Large language models are, at their core, pattern recognition machines. Which means engineers already have the instinct for this. You just need to apply it to email.
A system of templates — one for each recurring situation — means you never start from a blank page again. You open the template, adjust the details, and send.
Here are the categories most engineers need:
- Emailing clients and stakeholders
- Emailing contractors
- Emailing superiors
- Emailing colleagues
- Project update and status emails
- Meeting requests and follow-ups
- Declining, delaying, or redirecting requests
- Cross-cultural and international team communication
Building this from scratch takes time. You'll make mistakes along the way. But once you have it, writing emails in English becomes as fast as writing them in your native language.
| Skip straight to the finished system. I've already built the full template library — 30+ done-for-you email templates for every situation engineers face at work. Written by an engineer. Tested with engineers. Normally, this is content I would cover across 10+ hours of 1-on-1 training (that's around €1,300 of coaching). The template pack is €37. Get the Email Templates for Engineers → |
What Happens When Engineers Use This System
The engineers I work with who build their own email system — or who start with a solid template base — tend to notice three things fairly quickly:
- Their business communication feels more natural and less stressful
- They write emails in English about as fast as they do in their native language
- They stop second-guessing themselves after hitting send
None of that requires perfect grammar. It requires a system.
Frequently Asked Questions About Professional Email Writing in English
As short as possible while still being clear and polite. For most work emails — requests, updates, follow-ups — aim for 3 to 5 short paragraphs. If you need more space, consider whether the content belongs in a meeting or a document instead.
Yes. Many non-native English speakers avoid starting a sentence with "I" because it was flagged as impolite in school. In modern professional English, starting with "I am writing to…" or "I wanted to follow up on…" is completely standard and appropriate.
It depends on your context. If your company communicates casually and uses first names, match that. If your contacts are senior stakeholders or external clients you haven't met, default to more formal language until you get a sense of their style. When in doubt, warmer and more formal is safer than too casual.
Being too direct without realising it. Languages like German, Dutch, and many others are more structurally direct than English. A sentence that sounds perfectly normal in your native language can come across as blunt or even rude when translated word-for-word into English. Using conditional tenses ("Would it be possible to…") and adding polite signposts ("Just a quick note to…") goes a long way.
No. Clarity and politeness matter more than perfect grammar. Most readers — native and non-native alike — will overlook minor errors if your message is easy to understand and your tone is warm. What leaves a bad impression is an email that is confusing, abrupt, or unclear about what you need.
Writing emails in English is a skill, not a talent. It can be learned, practised, and — with the right system — made fast.
If you want to skip the trial-and-error phase, I've done the work for you.
30+ Email Templates for Engineers — €37
Every template you need for international project communication. Done-for-you. Copy, adjust, send.
Built by an engineer who also teaches English — because generic business email templates are not written for your world.
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