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Dr. Mark Jordan ~ ENGL 2311:
Technical Writing
Things to Know about Email
General
Comments
- In this course, our email
communication is the main
way we will communicate. With
this in mind, you must
have your own email
account and you should check it preferably every day, or
at least every other day. Beware of the danger of failing to check
your email or the website for days or weeks at a time
because there is no set time for "class."
Besides the personal
email messages you generate using your own account, you
will also, from time to time, be asked to participate in
electronic class conferences on Nicenet.
- Please do not type
in all caps, either in your email or your papers
(especially
not in your papers, except possibly in titles or
subheadings!). Typing in all caps is the print equivalent
of shouting in someone's face, and personally I don't
care for it. It also makes lines harder to read because
all the letters are the same height and tend to run
together to the eye.
- For this course, although there
may be occasion to send certain documents as attached
files, the major
assignments, including most drafts, must be
surface-mailed. File
attachment works slightly differently on different
hardware and communication software, so you should be
knowledgeable about how to do this on your system, should
the need arise. If in fact you do gain my approval for
sending an assignment as a file attachment,
I will accept only
files sent in the RTF format (Rich Text
Format) or perhaps some similar universal-language
format. My reason for this is that it is much more
difficult to unintentionally send a file infected with a
virus if that file is sent as an RTF file.
- Please try at all costs to
avoid changing email addresses during this
course. That becomes very
confusing to me, since I am communicating with perhaps
several dozen students, and may well result in you not
receiving my messages. Similarly, please try to avoid
using more than one existing email address, if you have
several. At the least, if
you do send from several addresses, you are obligated to
check each one every other day, at minimum, because I
respond to messages simply by hitting the "reply" button,
which automatically responds to the address the email was
sent from. If that
address is not your usual one, you may miss my
response.
- It is the student's
responsibility to get in touch with me by phone or
whatever means necessary if your email "bounces back," as
occasionally happens.m However, in most cases if you will
try re-sending the message at least once, no phone call
is needed.
Email Etiquette
Here are notes on various more
subtle aspects of using email in this course.
First, communicating through email
is different than speaking to another person, or even
writing a letter or note to another person. Because you are
not actually facing your "listener" and because of the lack
of clues to intended meaning which are provided by facial
expression, tone of voice, and body language, electronic
dialogue can easily lead to impoliteness and insensitivity,
or may be interpreted as rude even if that was not your
intent. Yet unlike traditional written communication, email
often happens at a fast pace and uses a less formal
tone--features which are more like oral speech than writing.
The partial anonymity, the
lack of clues to meaning, the informal tone, and the fast
pace all combine to create a context which sometimes invites
discourtesy and anger, sometimes referred to as "flaming."
So be mindful. Since email lacks
facial expressions and tones of voice, a reader may take
your words seriously when you are actually teasing or
joking. Many of you may be aware of symbols (called
emoticons or smileys) that may serve to indicate your tone
of voice. For example, :) shows a smiley face when looked at sideways,
and indicates a humorous tone. It's made with a colon
followed by a parenthesis mark. Similarly, ;) is made with a semicolon instead of a colon,
and is generally taken as a wink and a smile.
While I don't necessarily
object to the use of emoticons, on the other hand a capable
writer should be able to project tone without them, and
should try to do so when emailing to someone who is not well
known to the writer. "Smileys" do not convey a very formal
tone.
An informal tone is what I often use
myself in email--less formal at least than a typed business
letter--but on the other hand, keep in mind that your email messages in this
class are, in essence, similar to electronic memos sent from
office to office within a company. So while email for this
course is acceptably less formal than a business letter,
neither should it be quite so informal as conversation with
a friend. Express yourself
with courtesy and politeness, even if that is not the custom
in Internet chat rooms that you may have experienced. If
anyone is being bothered by rude or insensitive email from
anyone in class let me know immediately.
Lastly, you should pay more
attention to grammar, punctuation, and spelling than you may
be accustomed to doing in email among close friends or in
live chat rooms. Again, remember that email in this course
is similar to inter-office memos: less formal than business
letters, but more formal than chat.
Email Addressing
Protocols
- Always put something brief
but descriptive in the subject line. If it's an assignment, put something like
"Paper3" (without the quotation marks).
- Something other than your real
name may appear on the automatic return address which
email messages carry. If that is so, please include your real
name at the end of the
message, at least until I get to know
everyone.
- Because various communication
softwares use slightly different formats, I will not
require class members to use a uniform email memo format.
However, many companies
prefer that their employees all use the same format, and
of course many memos are still done in hardcopy rather
than as email. There are a fairly small number of
variations in standard hardcopy memo format; the
customary format may be taught by occasionally asking you
for hardcopy memos, which should be faxed to me.
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