22 email rules every professional should know

girl works on laptop

US employees spend, on average, about a quarter of the workweek combing through hundreds of emails.

Despite the fact that we're glued to our reply buttons, career coach Barbara Pachter says plenty of professionals still don't know how to use email appropriately.

Because of the sheer volume of messages we're reading and writing, we may be more prone to making embarrassing errors, and those mistakes can have serious consequences.

Here are some basics of modern email etiquette every professional should know:

DON'T MISS: 24 unprofessional habits that could get you fired

Add the email address last

"You don't want to send an email accidentally before you have finished writing and proofing the message," Pachter, author of "The Essentials of Business Etiquette," tells Business Insider.

"Even when you are replying to a message, it's a good precaution to delete the recipient's address and insert it only when you are sure the message is ready to be sent," she says.

Double-check that you've selected the correct recipient in the 'To' line

Pachter says to pay careful attention when typing a name from your address book on the email's "To" line.

"It's easy to select the wrong name, which can be embarrassing to you and to the person who receives the email by mistake," Pachter says.

Make sure you address the correct person at the beginning of your email

A similar faux pas is addressing the wrong recipient at the start of your email, which Danny Rubin, author of "Wait, How Do I Write This Email?," says often happens when you send the same email to multiple people.

"Be sure your email recipient matches the first name at the start of the email ('Hi, John')," he writes. "You may even want to say each one out loud so you're sure of it. Sure beats sending an email to an important person but using someone else's name. Awkward."

See the rest of the story at Business Insider