According to a front-page article in The New York Times (Glater, 2006), students are bombarding their faculty with emails that are unprofessional in terms of etiquette, grammar, and content. Students often fail to adhere to even basic etiquette standards in professional correspondences and this can lead to miscommunication, at least in early days. Liberal use of text messaging abbreviations, personalised account addresses like “creatersonu@gmail.com“, use of inappropriate salutations often lead to unfavourable impressions of emails. Emails and the words used therein are a reflection of remitente and hisher attitude and so must be written aptly.
Professional tone
Writing a professional email is an important skill to have and can be mastered easily. Your email correspondence needs to reflect positively on you as a professional and must have a professional tone. “Tone” is a metaphor referring to the way a communication “sounds”. While writing profession e-mails, tone must be solemn, imploring and respectful. Recent non workplace related research also supports the importance of politeness in email messages in constructing and maintaining workplace relationships.
Contact information
Only indicate essential details such as name, qualification and institute within an email signature. You may also add your LinkedIn ID however too much information makes the signature harder to read and untidy. Make sure that all the details are up-to-date and written in simple fonts. Too many fonts and colours puts a bad impression.
Subject line
The most common issue is that students leave the subject field blank. While not an egregious error, omission of the subject looks lazy and requires more involvement from the supervisor to understand the message, therefore possibly lengthening response time.
Subject line is imperative to an email. One should never ever send emails without a subject line especially while mailing to your supervisor. It is one of the first things a recipient will see, so it’s essential that it well indicates the purpose of email. Brief and informative subject line is always one of the best ways to achieve high email engagement levels. Effective use of the subject line gives a positive impression and improves request clarity, both of which have the potential to reduce response time.
Salutation
This move is realised through a salutation, most commonly ‘Dear’, plus the recipient’s name. In the case of initial contact or a more formal relationship, title+surname should be used ; for ongoing relationships where both parties know each other, use of first name is appropriate. The formality of salutation and name-form additionally depends on the participants and their cultural backgrounds. Like in India, we don’t feel comfortable addressing our teachers by their first names. So, in such a case, we must use ‘Dear Sir/Madam’ or ‘Respected Sir/Madam’. Never use ‘Mrs’ for a female supervisor as it indicates gender and marital status. Always address them as ‘Dr’ or ‘Prof.’.
Email body
Include a polite greeting at the start of message as it always leaves a good impression on the reader. Put vital information as close to the beginning of your email as possible to ensure that your recipient actually reads it. Keep the email body concise without leaving any key information and use simple sentences while writing the message. When sending an attachment, properly mention what the attachment is about. If you want to emphasise on several points, try to bulletize them as it will make the text clearer.
Closure
Thank your supervisor in advance for his/her cooperation or answer. This shows that you are polite, as well as indicates that you expect a reply. You may use one of the following:
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Looking forward for your kind reply.
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Thank you in advance.
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Thanks for your kind consideration.
Formatting
Too many fonts and colours puts bad impression on reader and makes it difficult to read. One should use standard fonts (like Arial, Times New Roman) and colours while writing professional mails.
Proofreading your mail is essential before hitting the send button. Look for any error in grammar and spellings. Always check the recipient’s list while sending same mail to a list of people.
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