Emailing folks can be a situation fraught with anxiety. Written exchanges are intrinsically more challenging than verbal; written words do not convey the inflections of speech and facial expressions that are critical to face-to-face communication. So your favorite D-List Monktress is here to drop some knowledge on your n00b asses.
Proper Salutation
If this is your first time emailing an elder monk, always err on the side of caution and use their proper title (e.g. Hello Prof. So & So, Dear Dr. Bigwig). If they later tell you to call them by their first name, obviously you should comply. However, don’t make the automatic assumption that because they sign their reply email with their first name that you can become more casual. In the age of the internetz automatic signatures are all the rage, and 99% of their emails will be to their fellow peers, not peons like you. Hence, most will not bother to edit their shit for the 1%. If you can’t take the easy way out of addressing a woman as Doctor, Professor, etc do not just assume they are Mrs. That shit’s fucking annoying.
Don’t be too casual
Just because you’ve taken a class with a professor for two semesters in a row doesn’t make you buddies. Just because you have borrowed Secretary Johnson’s stapler every Thursday before orthopedic biomechanics doesn’t mean you can email ‘hey, can you do this thing by Friday? Thanks Janey!’ Asking people to do shit for you in a respectful manner can make things 100x easier than they would be otherwise. And for those of you mewling ‘but that’s their job, why do I need to kiss their ass?’ stfu. I know you’ve spent several times in your life bitching that someone ordered you around like a peon without so much as a please or thank you, so pay that shit forward.
Write every email for elder monk eyes
Why? You may ask, why can’t I jet off a quick email to my boss saying ‘yo, collaborator Y’s samples ran SUPER AWESOME with my Epicsauce Technique’? Because oftentimes, rather than rewrite your info more eloquently so you don’t look like a hippy nerd, your boss or co-worker will forward that shit out to relevant folks with nothing more than an ‘FYI’ slapped on it. Moral of the story: write every email as if it were going to be forwarded to a Relatively Important Person. Consistently sounding sharp over email makes more of a difference than you’d think.
Figure 1: Some people don't speak fluent LOLCats, mmkay?
