College Students (and others…) Listen up! Good advice on crafting email messages from Neltje Maynez:
When you are in college, or taking classes from an online university, many students are concerned about their class work and keeping up in class. In today’s world, it is even easier to keep in touch with professors. A student merely has to send an email to a professor. They don’t even have to talk face to face. Many professors like emails because they can provide accurate information to the student. However, many professors don’t like email because they feel that students are far too informal with the emails they send. Too often, professors say that they see things like, “Lol”, “Ttyl”, “hee hee” and professors have no idea what those even mean! This skills that are used when you are in college will be used in the workplace. Whether you are a student, or a professional, here are 10 rules to writing a professional email. Your professor (or boss) will be pleased, and you will probably receive a quicker response.
1. Make the Subject Line Count
You want your the person you sent the email to first open your email. They get tons of emails a day, and if it is urgent, you want the recipient to read it. Include what class it is for, and what questions you have. The professor will appreciate it.
2. Get to the Point
If you are able to present the problem in the first sentence, the person will be more willing to help you.
3. Identify Yourself
Especially if this is for a professor (and even a boss) tell them what class you are in, and what section. Many professors teach many classes, and if you tell them which class you are, it will help them answer your questions even faster. If it’s for work, make sure that you are clear about what you are asking about.
4. Keep the Text Language to Yourself
Avoid anything such as “brb”, “ttyl”, that may be good for texting, but keep it out of emails.
5. Keep it Short
You want your email to be very short. Keep it around 1to 2 paragraphs. If it is longer than that―but you must send it, try including bullet points. The recipient will be more likely to read it. If you have a lot to say, try just talking to the professor. It will be easier for both parties if you need to talk at length.
6. Say Hello!
It is always nice when you add a small hello, or good morning, or good afternoon. It shows that you are trying to be polite. You aren’t bothering the recipient with lots of showy sayings, but you aren’t being rude either.
7. Proofread
Make sure to read your email before you send it. You will be able to catch a lot of mistakes. Your professor and co-workers will respect you if you can spell and have proper punctuation. This will also get you in the habit of reading over your work before you submit it.
8. Be Pleasant
Just because you are annoyed with a professor or co-worker, don’t show it in your email. They will be less willing to help you.
9. Respond Fast
Email is supposed to be fast. If you don’t respond within 24 hours, the person you sent the email to will forget about your question. Even if you respond and tell the person that you got their email, but you don’t have the time to draft an appropriate answer, let them know. They will appreciate that you took the time to inform them.
10. Have an Appropriate Signature Line
Make sure that if you have a signature set up on your email, it is profession and free of quotes, silly fonts, or smiley faces. Others will think you are immature if you send them an email and your signature is something in pink with smiley faces.
Writing emails can be an art. You want to be pleasant while getting straight to the point. If you learn to write good emails to your professors, they will want to help you. You will also be building skills when you go to the professional world. Any professional appreciates a well-written email.
The Author
Neltje Maynez is a current writer for MyCollegesandCareers.com. My Colleges and Careers is a site that helps people get to their top careers.
It has happened to everyone, they get an email that just sets them off. This happened to me last week. I was getting ready to leave for the day, and Ijust so happened to check my email, and I found a scathing email from one of my co-workers. I was so mad, it said some things in there that shouldn’t be said in an email. At first, I wanted to respond right away with my thoughts. Then, I decided that it wasn’t such a good idea. If this has ever happened to you, here are 5 tips to dealing with an extremely scathing email.
1) Don’t respond right away
The first thing that you will want to do when you get a mean email is reply with a few choice words of your own. Don’t do it. Again, don’t do it! You won’t believe how many conflicts you can avoid if you wait before hitting reply. Allow yourself to calm down and figure out why the person sent the email. Count to three, take a bathroom break, just don’t reply to the email just yet.
2) Be Polite
After you have cooled down a bit, and you are ready to reply to the email, think about what you are going to say. Start off the email being polite, don’t let the person sending the email get the best of you. If you can show that it doesn’t affect you, they won’t bother you. Sometimes, the sender won’t even mean to have a harsh tone, and if you start the email off nicely, they will think that the email they sent was silly.
3) Offer a solution
Even if you are mad, offer a solution. Offer to fix the problem, or better yet, offer to talk to the person face to face. If you do this, you will be able to solve problems a lot faster.
4) Stand your ground
Just because someone is mad at your for something, doesn’t mean that you should back off because they sent you a rude email. If you are in the wrong―and you know it―apologize. If you don’t think that you are, don’t let people walk all over you. If it gets too complicated, offer to talk in person. You might think that someone was trying to be rude, when in reality, they meant something completely different.
Emails are sometimes hard to address. Because emails are written, it is a lot easier to write something mean rather than facing someone else. If you get an email where you feel attacked, follow these four steps. You will feel a lot better about dealing with the situation. If you follow these steps, you will also not do something (or write) something
About the Author
Neltje Maynez is a freelance writer for MyCollegesandCareers.com. My Colleges and Careers helps people determine if an online education is right for them, helps them understand which online masters degree programs are right for them and which online schools they can choose from to reach their goals.
Way to go Meghan Casserly – alot of great tips on how to NOT email on the job.
Here’s the link.
And for a quick excerpt, “People do or say things via email that they would never do in person. They’d never upstage a higher up in a meeting, but in email there’s this disconnected feeling of not having to look anyone in the eye that emboldens people to act in competitive or even arrogant ways.”
Are you an email flipper?
Waaaaaa? Wadyamean, flipper?
An email flipper is a person who can’t bear just let an email “rest.” In other words, you receive an email, think there is some good information in it, and just HAVE TO think of someone to send it to, then send it.
OK OK. We’ve all done it.
But consider this – with the average worker getting 110 emails each day, is it good or poor etiquette to add more to their mix? Why not decide to only send emails that are critical or important – not “nice to have.”
Why do some people feel compelled to flip? Dunno. Perhaps they want to feel productive, perhaps they want others to know they’re thinking of them, or maybe even that they just can’t take the reigns and say “Good info, now onto the next task.” What to you think?
Challenge for the week: Don’t “flip” them, let them rest
Wassamatter?! Don’t you trust me?
I can see using this in a potentially legal situation, but other than that, give it a rest.
Oh. And besides, it takes time to set these up!
What is YOUR Pet e-peeve? We’d love to know!
I really don’t need to see an autoresponder that says “Thanks for your message. I will respond to you as soon as I can.”
Duh…
What is YOUR Pet e-peeve? We’d love to know!
This one is just plain rude. Take a moment and tell me what is in the attachment. One brief sentence will do nicely.
What is YOUR Pet e-peeve? We’d love to know!
So you have done the right thing by sending information to someone. they see the message and call you, saying, I don’t have time to read the email, can you just explain it to me?
ARGGGHHH.
Now, there’s a caveat. If you sent a 42 page epistle, then shame on you. Email messages should be brief and concise.
Yech. I hate it when someone underlines a word in an email message. I think it is a hyperlink! Bold it. italicize it. enlarge it. Just don’t underline it…
What is YOUR Pet e-peeve? We’d love to know!
This is a very interesting post by Urlesque…
I agree with the first four — totally! The last one doesn’t work for me – I think it is really important to include your email address in your autosignature for a number of reasons, mostly to make it easy for your contacts to download all of your contact information. A second reason is because they can be highlighted and used on mobile apps. What do you think of these?
