Is Selective Capping O.K. in Business E-mails?

If you needed to send an e-mail to your coworkers with a very important message, would it then be O.K. to cap and bold the sentence that was of the utmost importance?

Ask yourself this… Would you cap and bold if the e-mail were on an official interoffice memo? If not, then don’t do it in e-mail. Do you really thing that unless you cap and bold those selected words that the recipients would not know their importance otherwise? By doing so you may be perceived as being condescending and in e-mail, raising your voice.

Keep in mind when using any sort of formatting, you are indicating emphasis. And, you are leaving the level of emphasis up to the recipient’s perception of what they think you mean. So why take that risk?

I prefer to believe that the right choice of words can communicate the importance of any statement without resorting to formatting. As a matter of fact, I rarely use formatting myself and have yet to have had anyone underestimate or misinterpret the intent or gravity of my e-mails.

That said, caps and bolding can be used if done thoughtfully and sparingly. You just have to be sure to be very careful to not do so in a manner that will be perceived as patronizing, yelling, overbearing or demanding.