You may recall that a couple months ago the New York Times ran this piece on the habits of students who email their professors. Today, there’s something of a follow-up at Inside Higher Ed. The upshot seems to be that being polite, and especially not assuming an overly-familiar tone towards one’s professor simply because one is using email, is a good idea.
Given that, frequently, emails to one’s professor are intended to get something (information about an assignment, an extension, etc.), I would have thought this was kind of obvious. Is rudeness a good strategy for getting someone to give you something he or she doesn’t have to give you?
Perhaps, though, I overestimate the size of the “no-brainer” terrain on electronic communication. A blog-related example after the break:
I received an email from a publisher’s rep (as I do from time to time, owing to the visibility of this little blog) letting me know about a new book that might be of interest and asking if I might review it or otherwise announce its existence on this blog. It was a perfectly nice email, both clear and enthusiastic. The salutation was “Hello!”, but given the odd nature of the relationship between blogger and blog-reader, it’s not like I was offended not to be addressed as “Professor Stemwedel”. Also, I noticed that I was one of two persons to whom the email message was sent (looking at the CC-list), but that didn’t bother me, either.
So, I was all set to send an interested reply to the sender of this email.
But I had noticed already that there was another message waiting for me from the same sender. The second message read:
hey could you let me know if you can see all the other emails? biotch.
call me.
This message? Leaving me a little less favorably disposed toward the potential interaction. (Also, it’s spelled “beeyotch”.)
I thought it was “beeatch.”
Ha! I would guess that wasn’t actually meant for you. Here’s hoping it was a typo on “biotech.”
I also read it as biotech. And the proper spelling and pronunciation is “Biznatch!”
I just got one of those emails and it started with “I love your blog- it is so interesting and informative.” (Umm, right, beeatch. You’ve never even read it. Why would you think I’d be fooled by that crap?) Question is, should I be flattered that they even took the time to harvest my email (which isn’t linked) or annoyed at the spam? The book they’re peddling does look interesting, though.
I kind of understand the “Professor Stemwedel” thing, though. Title’s are pretty much never used outside some very narrow situations anymore, in my experience, so both as a writer and reader of an email (or letter), I’d feel like sucking up, or worse, like use of an uncomfortably complete marketing database, to use an academic title.
For the record, I have no problem with blog-related email being addressed to “Janet” or “Dr. Free-Ride”. The formality of a “Professor Stemwedel” for blog stuff is unnecessary. (Indeed, I haven’t entirely settled on a preference for how I’m addressed by my students, which means I’ll tolerate a “Janet” there, too.)
But the over-familiar “How U doing?” or “Yo!” just don’t strike me as the right way to address someone one doesn’t know in a personal context. And “beeyotch” ought at least to be spelled correctly.
I’m somehow touched you don’t mind being called a bitch so long as they spell it right.
Further to the above, I’ve had such confusion trying to decide how to begin an e-mail (Dear —- doesn’t work if you don’t know enough about them, but To Whom It May Concern feels stuffy, and Dear Sir/Madam doesn’t feel right) that I’ve given up both on introductions and on the “yours, Thomas Winwood” at the end. I just write the e-mail and let them read the From: line to find out who it’s from.
I make a delibrate effort with my emails to students to be polite and formal. So I do address them Dear X and format them correctly. After all I am stressing the importance of written and oral communication in my classes so I try to set an example, whenever I can.
There has been an improvement on the emails I received from students. Probably since my university introduced a “code of the web”.
My reaction to ‘How U doing’ is not to assume the writer is being familiar, but to assume the writer is of limited literacy. But perhaps that’s due to being new to the Internet, having only used it since 1994.
The illiteracy thing is newer than 1994…. I am bothered when I see posts with absolutely no capitalizations, abbreviations like “u” for “you”, and so forth.
Sometimes I try to step back and remember that not everybody types as fast as me. But, then, I’m still bothered. It just looks so igorant to see things written that way.
-Rob