Notice And Comment: Email Management And Etiquette
Do you have any tips to offer me (or anyone else who struggles with email)?
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If I owe you an email, I apologize. I live in a perpetual state of agita over email. I get stuck in these ruts of anxiety and paralysis, where I feel incapable of responding to even the simplest messages because I’m so far behind in correspondence—which of course makes me fall only farther behind. It’s a vicious cycle.1
So my first question for this latest installment of Notice and Comment—the feature here at Original Jurisdiction where I urge you to respond by posting in the comments (please, not by email)—is this: how do you manage your torrent of electronic correspondence? Do you have any tips, tricks, or best practices?
My second question: do you use a greeting or salutation, and if so, what? Some possibilities:
Hi David. (my default)
Hi, David. (with comma—some friends of mine use this)
Dear Mr. Lat: (with colon and honorific—I use this with fancy people, like judges)
Dear David, (with comma—I use this for especially heartfelt correspondence with non-fancy people)
[no salutation] (I do this with my husband Zach, or if I’m replying to a message and in a rush or lazy; if I’m starting a fresh thread of correspondence, I always use a salutation of some sort)
My third and final question: do you use a signoff? Some possibilities:
Best regards, (my default)
Best, (my default if I’m lazy or in a rush)
Sincerely yours, (I use this with fancy people or for especially heartfelt correspondence with non-fancy people)
[no sign-off] (I do this with my husband Zach, or if I’m replying to a message and in a rush or lazy)
I welcome your thoughts on these or any other email-related issues—in the comments to this post, not by email (unless you are okay with not getting a response). Thanks!
If I owe you an email, feel free to follow up by replying to your original email, which sometimes guilts me into action. You can also follow up with a phone call, text message, Facebook/Twitter/Instagram message, carrier pigeon, or smoke signal—anything but email. I have some weird mental block about email these days….
I am glad to see somebody thinking about this. We need to establish a norm. Maybe that means you and me need to do it. At https://www.rasmusen.org/special/Cedars_School/02_08b_Writing_letters_and_Emails.pdf
is a handout I gave to my seventh-graders last week. I like "Hello" instead of "Dear", but I am not satisfied with it. There ought to be a valediction too. I use IHS, as a Christian, or YT, as a gesture towards Yours Truly.
Salutations are not something that I've particularly struggled with when emailing professors and faculty. However, when emailing administrative staff is where I struggle. I am always unsure whether to use something along the lines of "Honorific. X" and rather to use their first name informally such as "Hello X,". So I usually end up going with the generic "Good afternoon" or something else along those lines.
As for sign-off, I almost exclusively use Thank You or Greatly Appreciated as my usual communication is that of a request for a particular service.