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Teaching the Art of Email Writing

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I hate babying my students or being preachy with them. I also don’t want to come off as condescending. However, I feel that there is an urgent need for me to teach the so-called computer generation how to write an email. I received about a dozen emails in the past three weeks that went as follows:

i need to meet when can i come by your office

And this was the extent of the email. No greeting, no signature. Except one student who signed the email with “XOXO.” Which was not extremely helpful in allowing me to deduce who was writing to me.  No punctuation either.

So this is what I’m planning to say:

Dear students! It is a good idea to begin an email with greeting a person you are writing to. “Hi” is better than no greeting at all. “Hi professor” is even better than that. And “Hi Professor Clarissa” is the best version of all because it demonstrates that you took the trouble of learning the name of the person you are addressing.

Then, it’s a good idea to explain who you are. Example, “I’m your student in the course ABC.” I usually get over a hundred work-related emails per day, and it’s hard for me to place a person immediately.

After that, you say what you need to say and then – and this is very important – sign the email. With your first and last name. 

I can’t even remember the last time I got this kind of an email from a student.

I feel like a nursery teacher right now.

18 responses to “Teaching the Art of Email Writing”

  1. Pen Avatar
    Pen

    Even with the email issues, couldn’t they just come by for office hours?

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Good question. Freshmen and sophomores never do. It’s like the idea of office hours is alien to them, even though I keep asking them to come by. I’ve even promised candy to get them to come over. But it never happens, though.

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      1. Pen Avatar
        Pen

        I’ve noticed that not many people go to office hours in my classes. I do when I have trouble and don’t have conflicts, and it certainly payed off nicely when I took my last exam: I actually had a clue as to what was going on.

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  2. Dame Eleanor Hull Avatar
    Dame Eleanor Hull

    My syllabus explains how to write a proper e-mail. But no one wants to come to office hours. Or else they try to make appointments for times when I’m actually holding office hours and they could just drop by—because they want to make sure no one else will be there. I’m starting to wonder why I bother to have office hours at all, except by appointment.

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  3. gudenuf Avatar
    gudenuf

    “I can’t even remember the last time I got this kind of an email from a student.”

    I’m confused. Are you saying poor emails are rare, and that your one class a bunch of really bad writers?

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      It isn’t just one class. All students write these incomprehensible emails with no greeting, no punctuation and no signature.

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  4. scratchy888 Avatar
    scratchy888

    Hi Clarissa,

    I created this whiny and self-absorbed memoir, based on a theme of existential search and “finding oneself” in Africa. I decided to entitle it “eat, pray, love”, because that is the exact order of the events in the story, more or less. I suspect this could be a best seller in due course. What do you think??

    http://www.lulu.com/product/ebook/killing-substance/18478992

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Sounds fascinating. But what does it have in common with the bestselling abomination titled Eat, Pray, Love?

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  5. scratchy888 Avatar
    scratchy888

    bloggerclarissa :
    Sounds fascinating. But what does it have in common with the bestselling abomination titled Eat, Pray, Love?

    You will have to read it in due course. I think you will see that the woman plagiarized me and owes me a lot of money.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      Really? I wouldn’t be surprised. I always knew there was something fishy about her. Have you seen my posts about her book? The general audience was peeing itself with delight over it. (The book, that is, not my writing about it.)

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  6. scratchy888 Avatar
    scratchy888

    bloggerclarissa :
    Really? I wouldn’t be surprised. I always knew there was something fishy about her. Have you seen my posts about her book? The general audience was peeing itself with delight over it. (The book, that is, not my writing about it.)

    I’m joking of course. But the parody of spiritual discovery I wrote some years ago (I can’t remember how many) does have the essential elements of eating, praying and what have you — not exactly “love” but sexuality.

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      I’m sure what you wrote is a bizillion times better than what she wrote. Of course, I will have to find out for myself once the semester is over. 🙂

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  7. scratchy888 Avatar
    scratchy888

    bloggerclarissa :
    I’m sure what you wrote is a bizillion times better than what she wrote. Of course, I will have to find out for myself once the semester is over.

    Ok, enjoy the Freudian references in it. After my thesis, I left Freud for dead. One of the examiners said “take all the Freud out” and it was true, the thesis did read much better after that.

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  8. Massimo Avatar
    Massimo

    Well, at least the person did not write “hi r u in ur office” like some do in my class.
    And I also observe the same thing, I have way more people e-mailing me and requesting explanations and clarifications over course material or homework, than actually showing up during my office hours to do the same thing. A couple times they called me on the phone too.
    I make it very clear to them at the very beginning of the term and on my course web page that, there being almost 400 enrolled students and no teaching assistant having been assigned to me, I cannot possibly be expected to provide individual assistance over email or telephone, that that would mean for me to be writing emails 24/7, that I am willing to meet them outside office hours too, at pretty much any time that is convenient to them (including the weekend), as long as they let me know at least a day in advance. Yet, the fraction of students who take advantage of that is close to 1%.

    I think that for the most part they just see coming to class or to the office as an inconvenience, they expect stuff to be put at their disposal where they can easily access it, at their convenience. Same goes for course notes, now I find myself having to post them online because every instructor does it, and I know that that means that the students won’t be reading the textbook at all anymore — as a matter of fact a lot of them ask me to post them prior to class, and I am convinced that many of them make that request because, that way, instead of coming to class they can just spend that lecture hour reading the notes at home.

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  9. JaneB Avatar
    JaneB

    Our new colleague (who is quite a bit younger than me) writes emails like this – all one line, no capitalisation, signed with his initial or an emoticon.

    He gets paid a lot more than me because he is a ‘research star’ so it hasn’t done him any harm.

    If my COLLEAGUES are doing the thing I find rude and inappropriate, am I becoming an old fuddy-duddy?

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  10. NancyP Avatar
    NancyP

    Are the students expecting you to recognize their email addresses? This might be reasonable in an organization that doles out addresses in the format firstname.lastname@organization.org . Even then, you encounter problems such as distinguishing john.doe1 from john.doe2 from john.doe(n) .

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    1. bloggerclarissa Avatar
      bloggerclarissa

      I know! The emails at my university are impossible to decipher this way. I barely recognize my own email address. 🙂

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  11. KK Avatar
    KK

    Here are The Ten Commandments of Email Writing:
    1.Thou shalt include a clear and specific subject line.
    2.Thou shalt edit any quoted text down to the minimum thou needest.
    3.Thou shalt read thine own message thrice before thou sendest it.
    4.Thou shalt ponder how thy recipient might react to thy message.
    5.Thou shalt check thy spelling and thy grammar.
    6.Thou shalt not curse, flame, spam or USE ALL CAPS.
    7.Thou shalt not forward any chain letter.
    8.Thou shalt not use e-mail for any illegal or unethical purpose.
    9.Thou shalt not rely on the privacy of e-mail, especially from work.
    And, here’s the “Golden Rule” of E-Mail :
    10.That which thou findest hateful to receive, sendest thou not unto others.

    Source: http://www.laughitout.com/2011/11/ten-email-commandments.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+YourDailyFunDose+%28Humor%29&utm_content=Google+Reader

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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