Hello together

You are writing an email to several people and want everybody to feel addressed. Instead of listing their names individually, you use a collective greeting to address everybody at the same time and start your message with:

Hello together!

While we say “hallo zusammen” in German, native English speakers would never say “hello together”. This one is a dead giveaway that you are translating directly from German, and one we can correct easily.

The “together” in “hello together” refers to doing something collectively, expressed through “gemeinsam” in German. If I counted to three and we then said “hello” at the same time, we could afterwards say that “we said ‘hello’ together”.

To greet many people at once, use something like “hello everyone” or “hi everybody”.

Avoid the gendered “guys”, even if it is often used to talk about mixed-gender groups. “Guys” is decidedly male, whether we intend to imply an all-male audience or not. You wouldn’t go to a zoo and greet all animals with “hello giraffes”, so let’s not group all genders as “guys”.

You can replace “guys” with unisex words such as “folks” or “people”. If you are not a fan of this level of political correctness, you can often remove “guys” entirely:

• “You guys are funny.” → “You people are funny.”
• “Have a nice weekend, guys!” → “Have a nice weekend!”

Fun fact: I named this course “Hello Together” sarcastically, and quickly learned that this wasn’t the best decision. It originally went out via email, and the messages’ deliverability suffered because of the name. Turns out some email providers send messages that contain “hello” in their subject line straight to the spam folder.