An out-of-office reply is read cold, by strangers as often as colleagues. Nobody reads it twice, and nobody wants your life story. Its whole job is to answer one question in the first two seconds: are you away, and when are you back? Everything else is optional.
Lead with the two facts that matter
State that you are away in the first sentence, then give the exact return date in the same breath. Do not bury it under a greeting or a pleasantry first. A sender scanning their inbox should not have to read a second sentence to find out when you will reply. Use the date exactly as you know it: a specific day is clearer than a vague phrase like “back soon,” which means something different to everyone who reads it.
Say less about why than you think you should
“On holiday” or “on leave” is a complete reason. It does not matter whether you are on a beach, in hospital, or on parental leave: the reader does not need the specifics, and a stranger definitely does not. Parental leave is the one case where naming it plainly (“on parental leave”) is normal and fine, since it is already a standard, neutral phrase. Everything more specific than that, an illness, a procedure, a family situation, a named event, belongs in a text to a close friend, not an auto-reply that anyone with your email address can trigger.
The same discipline applies to an alternative contact. If you have someone covering urgent matters, name them and how to reach them, exactly once, near the end. If you do not have anyone to name, say nothing about it. A vague line like “please contact my colleague” with no name is worse than no line at all: it promises help that does not actually exist.
Keep it to four lines
A good out-of-office reply is short enough to read while your cursor is still moving to the next email. Three or four lines is the ceiling: the away statement and return date, one brief line on the reason, and, only if it applies, one line for an alternative contact. Skip the personal sign-off; this is a template that fires automatically, not a note from you.
Example
Common mistakes
- A vague return window like “back soon” or “away for a bit” instead of an exact date.
- Oversharing the reason: naming an illness, a procedure, or family details nobody asked for.
- Inventing a generic backup contact (“reach out to my team”) when nobody is actually covering.
- Burying the away statement under a long greeting or an apology for being unavailable.