Email Etiquette

Treating people—especially teachers—well

Your Best Practice is to use your Ashland email address, which you get to by clicking the Outlook icon in Microsoft 365. Click the blue  New Mail  box in the upper left to get started.

This website from the University of Southern Mississippi does a great job of discussing email etiquette, and I would just add a few things:

• The first thing I think when I get an email without a subject line is “lazy and sloppy.” This person couldn’t even be bothered to fill in that blank. Why should I pay much attention?
• You are writing to an English teacher and you are trying to get good things to happen. Checking the spelling and punctuation should be an absolute minimum. Do you want me to think that you don’t care about your writing?
• High school boys and girls think of 90 seconds as a really long turnaround time on any message, but that’s not our environment here. Your teacher is not a high school boy or girl who stares at a cell phone 24/7. The syllabus for our course points out that my emails actually have office hours, so if I didn’t respond to your desperate Saturday midnight email within half an hour, there is a reason. I was in bed and I’ll deal with it during my next office hours on Monday.
• Many of you are in some form of business education. You might as well get used to writing respectful, adult emails. Most companies will not tolerate misspelled, childish emails, jive talk, etc.

The views and opinions expressed in this page are strictly those of the page author.

The contents of this page have not been reviewed or approved by Ashland University.

Revised 8/24/24 • Page author: Curtis Allen • e-mail: callen@ashland.edu.