Email is where most office workers save the most time with AI: replying to long threads, getting the tone right on tricky messages, and writing follow-ups you’ve been putting off.
Reply to a long thread
“Summarise what’s being asked of me in this thread, then draft a reply that answers each point, under 150 words.” You get a checklist and a draft at once.
Fix the tone
“Rewrite to be polite but firm; keep every fact and date.” or “Make this shorter and warmer.” AI is good at tone and bad at knowing your facts, so keep the facts in your draft.
Difficult messages
Declining a request, chasing a senior colleague, apologising for a mistake: describe the situation and what you want to achieve, ask for two versions, pick and edit.
Your voice
Give two emails you wrote as examples (“write in this style”), or edit drafts so they don’t all sound the same. Colleagues notice generic AI phrasing.
💡 Outlook and Gmail have built-in AI drafting (Copilot in Outlook, Help me write in Gmail) that sees the thread directly, so you don’t need to copy-paste it.
⚠️ Read every AI email before sending. Check names, numbers, dates and promises; an AI draft can commit you to things you never agreed to.
Practice
Try the four exercises with a real (anonymised) thread.
📎 Practice files for this article
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Lesson 3 worksheetPrompts and exercises for this lesson.
