In one of the buildings at our university campus, a big TV screen next to the staircase tried (in vain) to educate students on how to correctly send emails by listing dos and dont's. The funny examples convinced me to stop and read what was being displayed, for the first time in more than five years since I take those stairs, but judging from the emails I get from students, the message didn't stuck for long.

A few examples I can still remember:

• Don't use your personal email address<destroy4r2001@hotmail.com> but your student email <firstname.lastname@student.university.be>.
• Don't write question! or help as the subject but actually mention what your inquiry is about course x: question on y.
• Don't simply use dear or sup to address the recipient but use the correct title and name dear dr. Groeneveld.
• Don't end your email without a salutation or with ciao but be polite best regards, name.
• Don't forget to check your text on grammatical errors but re-read before you press send.

I'd like to add a few more guidelines myself:

• Don't use abbreviations idd but write everything in full indeed.
• Don't write in smartphone-mode need2know but remember email is a digital letter form.
• Don't forget subjects or conjugating verbs is problem but show respect and write correct sentences This is a problem.
• Don't lean heavily on the exclamation marks is problem!!!11! but only use one if really needed!
• Don't rely on emojis to express your opinion 💩 but use sentences and words What a shitty assignment.

Our Flemish government has a language advice team that published email etiquette guidelines, where number one is do not send unnecessary emails. Another well-known local job recruitment agency posted 25 rules where Adhere to the rules you were taught at school is probably the best advice: good sentence structure, use of capitals and punctuation marks, ...

The first two words of a student email give me a very good indication whether or not the student put in effort to correctly formulate their question. Over the years, I've received mails that start with:

• Dear, (I am not your lover; please use my name to address me. Relying on the anonymous Beste, in Dutch isn't that much better) This is the most common way students seem to address me.
• Groeneveld, (Ouch. I do have a first name, and what happened with simply beginning with "hello"?)
• Dear Prof. Groeneveld, (I am flattered but am not a professor. But thanks, I guess?)
• Hey, (Woah woah woah, do I know you?)
• Hi Wouter, (That's not a big improvement...)
• I have a question (did you forget something? Hi, how are you?)

I wonder whether or not we can all benefit from a refresher in email etiquette. Some of the above guidelines (adhere to the rules you were taught at school) also make for great blog writing guidelines. Some bloggers love using abbreviations in combination with spoken language, making their text look like a long form of smartphone texting instead of a proper piece of written language. I don't care about rich usage of diction but I do get annoyed when encountering and having to look up what IDK means, since I Don't Know. Ha! No, really, I didn't, and it's not like you're going to buy back a significant amount of time by heavily relying on shorthand notations that your readers just have to figure out.

Emojis and abbreviations seem to have slipped into our daily email (and blog) texts, as Gmail-like conversation chains automatically push us towards informal chat-like writing instead of formal addressing and greeting. And there's nothing wrong with that, but the more we rely on that, the less we're capable of producing grammatically and structurally sound letters. And I do love sending and receiving a lovingly long letter.

Best regards,

Wouter Groeneveld. (Should that full stop be there? IDK 🙃 Presses publish)