E-mailing your professor

ENG 111B

ENG 111D

ENG 251A

• E-mail from your college account.
  Every student at Newberry has a newberry.edu e-mail account. If you use this account to e-mail me, I will know immediately who you are (so I don't delete your message) and you never run the risk of your message being diverted to my junk mail folder (which can happen when you send e-mail from a suspicious-looking yahoo.com or hotmail.com account, for example).
  Furthermore, your newberry.edu account is professional and appropriate in a way that "cutiepie6969@gmail.com" is not.
• Provide a meaningful subject heading.
  If your e-mail subject line includes your class and a brief mention of what you need from me, I am able to find it easily when I skim my Inbox. I can prioritize questions from students and answer those before I move on to the e-mails that just say "hi."
• Be professional.
  Yes, I know: E-mail is less formal than letter-writing. Nonetheless, you are writing to your professor, with whom you have a professional, not personal, relationship. Therefore, you need to write professionally. What does that mean?
  • Use an appropriate salutation. "Hi Dr. Armstrong" is okay; "hey" is not.
  • Use capital letters at the beginnings of your sentences.
  • Use punctuation.
  • Spell things out. "ru in ur office 2day?" is inappropriate and unlikely to get a response from me.
  • Use paragraphs if you have more than one short thing to say.
  • Use an appropriate sign-off. "Thanks" is always nice, followed by your name.
  • Use an appropriate signature line or don't use one at all. Your name and contact information is professional and appropriate. A witty or meaningful quote might be fine. A little image of a dancing martini glass, on the other hand, is not appropriate. Delete it.
• Recognize that your professor's priorities are sometimes different from your own.
  I try to be available as much as possible to help you. That means that I will often respond to e-mails on the weekends or late in the evening (by my standards, "late" is 11 p.m.; I realize your standards differ).
  However, just because I responded last Saturday at midnight does not mean I always will. Please don't send your professors e-mails in the middle of the night and think we'll get back to you within an hour or even eight hours.
  During regular business hours, I'm pretty quick to respond; still, you should always play it safe and e-mail your professors early enough that you can wait up to 24 hours (or a full weekend) for a response.
  Remember, poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part!
• Don't e-mail attachments.
  I realize some of your professors will accept attachments. I won't open them unless I've approved them ahead of time, and I rarely do that.
  As your syllabus notes, I don't accept e-mailed assignments. In part, it's because it's a hassle for me, and it's one that almost always results from your lack of planning. In part, it's because something always seems to go wrong: an attachment isn't formatted on my computer as it was on yours, or the attachment doesn't make it at all.
  I'm happy to look at your drafts in my office hours, but don't send them to me by e-mail.