Over 13 years of professorial practice I have unfortunately received too many emails (including, but not limited to, from students and postdocs) which according to me are written unprofessionally.
Below I will provide an example of an appropriate email (following only my precepts, others might have other opinions). Then I will provide some typical variations on this theme which I have seen over time, and explain why I think they are not appropriate.
This post is supposed to be a resource for my group - but comments are welcome, of course. For the sake of specificity I will consider the case where the email comes from a student submitting an assignment.
What it should read like
"Dear Dr. Bhattacharya,
Attached please find my assignment number 6.
Sincerely,
John Doe"
What it should not read like
i) No text in the body of the email
I often receive only the assignment attached to the email. No salutation, no body, no signature. I usually reply saying that I am not an automated submission system and need to be addressed and told who is sending me an email. Sometimes I wonder if it would be acceptable if I send an acknowledgement just by hitting return on the email, and not type anything in the return message (probably).
ii) No head or feet, only body:
"Attached please find my assignment number 6."
We don't know who the email is addressed to, nor who it came from. Did the sender type in my email address by mistake (it has happened -"Oops, wrong professor!" wrote the student after I pointed out her mistake - I had to look her name up in the RIT database), and do I have to open and read the attachment to figure out the answer to that question? No surprise if the attached pdf also does not list the author.
iii) Incomplete salutation, with or without a signature
"Hi,
Attached please find my assignment number 6.
John"
This format is professionally disrespectful, as it shows that the sender does not even care enough about who the recipient is to make the effort to find out and type their name (this is bad enough in itself; on top of it the sender is asking for something from the receiver).
The message conveyed by the sender is basically: "I don't care who you are or if you are a human being at all; just accept my assignment and grade it." I have actually received this type of salutation even from high-level professionals.
This "Hi" salutation is probably something that the sender could send their friend, buddy or chat partner; but I fall into none of these categories. Besides, the email is a formal one, and should be businesslike. Has the sender ever received a letter from the bank or utility company starting with just "Hi"? Even the generic ones have a "Dear Customer" or some equivalent.
iv) Misspelled name in address
"Dear Dr. Bhachattarya,
Attached please find my assignment number 6.
Sincerely,
John Doe"
I am sympathetic to those who cannot handle my polysyllabic last name (students get around the problem by calling me "Dr. B"), but people mess up even my first name (which has only two syllables). I have regularly seen simpler and more 'standard' names being butchered, even on documents of critical importance.
v) No signature
"Dear Dr. Bhattacharya,
Attached please find my assignment number 6."
Almost there; the sender just ran out of energy in the end. To me a signature is required to indicate the willingness of the sender to take responsibility for the email.
Caveat
I am fully aware that over the course of several email exchanges it can get tiresome to repeat salutations and use formal signatures. The case described above does not refer to such a situation, in which the exchange can indeed become more informal. I have considered the case of the opening email in any exchange, which in my opinion has to satisfy some formal constraints.
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