AC 2007-2658: HELPING ENGINEERING STUDENTS WRITE EFFECTIVE

EMAIL

Joanne Lax, Purdue University

Ms. Lax is the communications specialist for the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. She is a graduate of Northwestern University (B.S.J.,
1977; M.S.J., 1978) and Purdue University (M.A. 1994). She teaches graduate courses in
academic writing and speaking for international engineering students.

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© American Society for Engineering Education, 2007

 Helping Engineering Students Write Effective Email
Abstract

With the widespread availability of text messaging, instant messaging, and email, people are
communicating with more frequency, speed, and ease than ever before. However, some of the
same characteristics that make electronic communication so appealing to so many young people
may be leading to some nonstandard writing in educational and professional contexts.
Interestingly enough, a review of the literature reveals few educational efforts to systematically
teach the correct use of electronic communication. Thus, this paper discusses ways to teach
engineering students how to communicate effectively and politely in their email interaction with
professors, potential employers, peers, and others. An interactive class session has been
developed for the discussion and practice of some of the conventions of email writing. Audience
awareness on the part of the email writer is stressed as crucial to the accurate receipt of the
writer’s message; therefore, students learn the effect of tone and linguistic choices on different
audiences. The use of culturally appropriate salutations and closings also is emphasized.

Introduction

The use of electronic technology is pervasive on college campuses today. Between classes,
students can be seen walking with cell phones pressed to their ears, checking messages they
missed during class and making calls. Others are using their phones to text-message. In any
university hallway, students are sprawled on the floors accessing the Internet, working on
homework, “chatting/instant messaging,” and reading and sending email on their laptops.
Clearly, Generation Y is comfortable with communication technology.

The spatial restrictions of text-messaging and instant-messaging have created a new lingo that
has found its way into email. Because of this, some email can be nearly undecipherable to
people outside this tech-savvy demographic group. The abbreviations, sometimes obscure
emoticons, and lack of standard grammar, punctuation, and capitalization which are common in
emails among friends have caused some educators to wonder whether students’ writing skills are
being affected1-3 and if this generation of students can communicate effectively with recipients
outside its peer discourse community. This paper discusses the background of this potential
problem and reports on the results of an informal in-class experiment to see whether educators
have a valid reason to worry.

Background

ABET 2000’s emphasis on communication skills,4 especially vital in the era of the global
economy with burgeoning virtual collaboration among colleagues on distant continents, and the
prevalence of email in the engineering workplace, means that engineering graduates have a
greater need than ever for effective written communication skills.5 Any email
miscommunication can be costly in terms of job advancement, time, productivity, and
establishing rapport with unseen recipients.
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Unfortunately, miscommunication appears to be an all-too-common side effect of email. One
study found that the intended meaning of email is fully understood by only about 50% of its
readers, yet most people think of themselves as effective communicators.6 Part of the inherent
problem with email is the lack of nonverbal communication that generally accompanies people’s
spoken messages. Face-to-face, people are able to use tone-of-voice and a variety of types of
body language to convey the nuances of a message. Even on the telephone, tone-of-voice still
helps to clarify the actual meaning of the message. Emoticons such as the “smiley face” were
originally developed to help convey the intended meaning of email messages, but not everyone is
familiar with some of the less common ones, created out of various combinations of punctuation
and other symbols. In any case, emoticons usually are considered inappropriate in more formal
email contexts.

Of course, traditional hard-copy correspondence can suffer from the same lack of nuanced
meaning. But email seems to occupy a hybrid status between writing and oral speech that causes
some of its problems for its users —is it “written conversation.”7 or “letters by phone”8 ? The
literature contains several papers outlining the ambiguity of email’s identity, sharing some
features of both writing and speech.7,8 Like speech, email can be produced rapidly and often is
transmitted unedited. With early email programs, it was often cumbersome to run a check on the
spelling and/or grammar, but this excuse is no longer valid. However, many email writers hit the
“send” button without reviewing their writing, and may later regret their haste when they see
their errors in a reply. Unfortunately, errors in email writing sometimes can reinforce some
readers’ racial and/or xenophobic biases about the author—a misspelling in an message can be
regarded as an innocent typographical error, sloppiness, or even a sign of weak educational
preparation.9 Finally, unlike spontaneous (and unrecorded) speech, email is not ephemeral—it
can be stored on servers infinitely and can be forwarded and printed.7,10 Just such a situation
occurred in 2006 in which sent email messages with unsuitable content led to the resignation of a
U.S. senator. “Sending inappropriate email is one of the greatest dangers in using the Internet
for communicative purposes.”11

Moreover, miscommunication in email and other media also can stem from linguistic or cultural
differences. The impact of email on global audiences is especially important as North American
companies do business over the internet. Many non-American cultures have overt ways of
showing politeness; a major difference in many languages other than English is the existence of
two forms of second-person pronouns (eg. a “polite” or “respectful” “you” and the common
“you” used with subordinates such as younger people, intimates, and animals). Because the
expression of politeness can vary according to culture, there is much opportunity for
misinterpretation when the rhetoric does not seem to fit the conventions for politeness in the
reader’s speech community.12 Related to this is the use of certain accepted salutations and
signatures in business correspondence, in particular. Because of the increased informality of
North American culture during their youth, many Generation Y members have not had the
everyday experience of using courtesy titles such as “Mr.” or “Ms.” when addressing older
adults, in contrast to earlier generations.

International students, even those from countries in the so-called “Outer Circle,” in which
English is one of the official languages13 often need to acquaint themselves with the common
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North American phrases for correspondence greetings and closings. Thus, a greeting such as
“Dear Esteemed Madam,” which may be used to address a female with status in some countries,
may sound antiquated to North American ears. International students need to learn that “’status’
has little importance” in this culture.14

Finally, the tone informality and use of humor found in the writing of many North Americans
may actually be considered “offensive” to people in other parts of the world. This can include
syntactic elements such as personal pronouns (as noted above), contractions, informal
punctuation, and voice.13 While a Japanese business letter writer may go to great lengths to
create a good relationship with his or her reader, establishing rapport in written documents may
be irrelevant to a French businessperson.14

How do undergraduate engineering students learn how to write email for non-peer audiences?
Although information on email etiquette (a.k.a. “netiquette”) is readily available on the Internet
and in the professional literature10,15-21, some of the information is contradictory (such as the
contexts in which emoticons are acceptable),10,17 and the status of email seems to be in flux.22
Despite the availability of information on email etiquette, it is difficult to know if/how many
students have accessed it. In addition, many engineering students have little opportunity in their
already-crowded curriculum to take classes in professional writing where they might receive
explicit classroom instruction or be exposed to textbooks with a chapter on email writing. With
the likelihood that many current university engineering students have received no formal training
in writing email, some professors and administrators worry that the sloppiness they have seen in
emails and other correspondence from students might also appear in the students’
communication to audiences outside the university. Therefore, I developed a lecture to pass
along some general email writing guidelines to undergraduate engineering students and to collect
some information on their email literacy in the process.

Methods

This study had two purposes—to give students an introduction to appropriate use of email and to
see what they already know, given the same rhetorical purpose but three different specified
audiences. Two required undergraduate engineering classes were used—the sophomore and
senior seminars. At the beginning of each 50-minute class, the students were asked to fill out the
regular information on the front side of their attendance sheets and then turn over the paper to
write a fictitious email asking the intended recipient to meet. The addressee either was a
potential employer, a professor, or a friend, and this was determined by the location of the
students’ seat (the classes were held in large lecture rooms conveniently divided into three
sections). These lectures on email etiquette were quite timely, as many of the students were
actively corresponding with prospective employers several weeks following a very large
engineering job fair on campus. The students were given about five minutes to write the email
and then told to keep the sheets until the end of the class.

Although having the students write out an email longhand on paper was artificial, it was
unavoidable since the classes are not held in computer labs. However, the rhetorical purpose
was authentic in all three situations. A number of students even reproduced email templates to
the top of the page to make it appear more like a real email.
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The lecture covered a variety of topics: the characteristics of writing and speech and a discussion
of where email communication fit in; the use of appropriate greetings; common rules of email
etiquette and style for various audiences; how email reflects the author, positively or negatively;
and how to establish appropriate tone in the message. At the end of the class, I informally
questioned each section of the class about whether their emails had been suitably written, given
the designated audience. For instance, I asked the section which wrote emails to potential
employers whether any of the students had used emoticons in their writing.

Results

After I collected the papers from the two classes, I separated them according to the intended
audience. Taking two of the eight common rules for email writing documented16--“Use ‘online
lingo’ abbreviations cautiously” (for example, “C U” and “OMG”) and “Reserve emoticons for
personal communication” as the most likely indicators of audience awareness in the students’
writing—I calculated the percentage of such occurrences in each of the emails. In addition, the
use of verb contractions is most common in more informal writing12, so I looked for instances of
these as well.

I also searched for examples of phatic communication—communication used to establish

rapport—to determine where students were most likely to use these. Adding words such as
“dear” and “sincerely” can serve to create positive feelings in the addressee. Phatic words are
most often omitted when people are writing emails to peers16, so it could be expected that the
students’ emails to friends would have the lowest number of these linguistic forms.

Of the 99 emails written in the senior seminar, 36 (36.3 %) were addressed to a potential
employer; 27 ( 27.2%) to a professor; and 36 (36.3 %) to a friend. In the sophomore seminar, a
total of 182 emails was written--42 (23 %) to a potential employer; 44 (24%) to a professor; and
96 (53 %) to a friend. Because it seemed possible that there could be some differences in the
results based on the students’ year in college, results were figured separately for each class. It
should be noted that although nearly 30 percent of the undergraduate enrollment is international,
I did not attempt to separate their responses by U.S. citizenship or visa status.

Greetings

As mentioned above, the emails to friends could be expected to show the lowest incidence of
greetings. In fact, 30% of the sophomore emails contained no greeting at all; 40% began their
emails with “Hey +/ - a personal name or something generic such as Dude or Man;” and a total
of eight different greeting were used. Yet among the senior emails to friends, only one email
(3%) omitted a greeting; 56% began it with “Hey + /-;” and a total of nine different greetings
were used.

In their email to professors, both the sophomores and seniors used greetings 100% of the time.
Interestingly, the sophomores wrote “Dear + name” in 45% of their emails and “(Prof)essor +/-
name” in another 40%. However, the seniors preferred “(Prof)essor+/- name” in 59% of the
emails and “Dear + name” in only 22%. A total of only five different greetings was used, and
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“Hey” was not one of them.

Although all the senior emails to potential employers included greetings, 7% of the sophomore
messages did not. Of the seven different greetings used by the sophomores, “Dear + name”
occurred in 60% of the emails, followed by “Mr./Ms. + name)” in another 12%. Among the
eight greeting options used by the seniors, “Dear + name” led with 44% and “Mr./Ms. + name)
in 25% of the emails.

Closings

By far, the most popular way for sophomores and seniors to close their emails to friends was
with the sender’s first name, 44% in both groups. For the sophomores, the next most common
closing was using no closing at all (14%), followed by some form of “Later” (7%). The variety
of closings used by the sophomores was extensive—there were 25 different closings, ranging
from online lingo (eg., <3, CU~, l8tr) to a closing as formal as “Regards.” Seniors only used 13
different closings in their emails to friends; the next most popular after their first name was a
form of “Later.” These closings also varied from “Bye ^_^” to the formal “Best Regards” and
even “Sincerely.”

Not surprisingly, there was a great difference in the nature of the closings used in the emails to
professors. Because of the large public state university context, it was clear from the emails that
some students had never interacted with their professors. Many of these emails started, after a
greeting along the lines of “Dear Prof. X,” “This is [first name last name] from your ____ class.”
Since the students typically asked the professors to meet at some time other than the regular
office hours, many of the closings tended to take some form of “thanks.” Of the sophomore
emails to professors, 43% ended with “thanks +,” as did an almost identical 44% of the senior
emails.

In the emails to potential employers, some variation on “Sincerely” accounted for 40% of the
sophomores’ closings, followed by another 31% using some form of “Thanks.” In the senior
emails, the results were reversed, with “Thanks +” in 33% of the emails, followed by “Sincerely”
in 19%, and no closing (or name) in another 19% of them.

Contractions

As predicted, verb contractions appeared most often in the emails to friends: 62.5% of the
sophomore emails contained contractions, while they appeared in 64% of the senior emails to
friends. Of the 17 different contractions used by sophomores, the most popular was “let’s,”
followed closely by “what’s,” and “I’m.” For the seniors, of the 11 different contractions they
used, “let’s” was most common, followed by “what’s” and “how’s.” Since email authors
frequently omit punctuation, especially in informal messages, it was not surprising that the
apostrophe that belonged in the contractions often was missing. However, this was not the case
in the use of contractions in the two other categories of email.

The results of the use of contractions in the emails to professors were contradictory. While the
sophomores used contractions in 29.5% of their emails to their professors, the seniors only used
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them in 7% of the emails. Again, the sophomores showed more variety in their choice of
contractions, using seven different ones, of which “I’d” was the most popular, followed by
“I’m.” Only two senior emails, or 7% of the total, used contractions and both were “I’m.”

Finally, 19% of the sophomore emails to potential employers used contractions, with “I’d” and
“I’m” the most popular out of only five different contractions used. The seniors used the
contractions “I’m” and “I’ve” the most out of only four different contractions; 25% of their
emails to employers contained contractions. Given the seriousness of this writing context, it was
surprising that more seniors used contractions in these emails than in those written to professors.
Interestingly enough, three of the senior email authors had originally used contractions but
crossed them out and substituted the long form of the verb phrase.

On-line Abbreviations and Emoticons

Neither of these showed up to any extent in the emails of both seniors and sophomores. Neither
group used any online abbreviations in their emails to potential employers or professors. Only
one sophomore author used a smiley face in an email to a professor, while one senior used ^_^ in
an email to a potential employer. Even with their friends, sophomores only used online
abbreviations in 4% of the emails and emoticons in 8%. Seniors used online abbreviations in 8%
of their emails to friends and emoticons in14%.

Discussion

Given the emails my engineering colleagues and I have received from students over the years—
with unusual greetings such as “Hello Lax,” “Professor Joanne,” and “Joan” (repeatedly
misspelled), and self-centered requests/commands to meet students at night or on weekends (the
best times for their schedules)—I was fully expecting to find similar examples among the couple
hundred emails I collected in the two classes. Surprisingly, very few were inappropriate in any
way (although there were a couple of students in each class who saw the exercise as an
opportunity for expressing their sense of humor). Among the emails to employers and
professors, there were no examples of inconsiderate tone, requests for meetings beyond the
normal workday or workweek, or odd-sounding salutations. Perhaps the students were on their
best behavior, knowing that the papers would be turned in to their professors as evidence of their
attendance that day.

In any case, it is heartening to see that the majority of students demonstrated some awareness of
the audience to whom they were writing. Perhaps this is a result of prevailing writing pedagogy
in their first-year composition classes emphasizing the need to analyze audiences before writing.
The vast majority of the informal writing, including contractions, lack of greetings or signatures,
missing capitalization and punctuation, incorrect spelling, and incomplete sentence structure
occurred only in the emails written to friends, right where it was most acceptable. The few
nearly incomprehensible (at least to a non-Generation Y member) emails were found exclusively
in the emails to friends. The language of the emails to friends reflects the playfulness of peers
planning to get together and have fun. On the other hand, with the other two email audiences,
the students clearly seemed to realize that they were dealing with less familiar audiences, and
that the stakes of their communication were much greater. In the majority of the emails
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addressed to potential employers and professors, the student authors politely, formally, and with
few linguistic errors, asked for favors which could lead to employment or better grades (through
an opportunity to clarify their understanding of the course material). The engineering students’
attention to writing was quite similar to a study showing carefully constructed emails of
international students requesting enrollment in the class of a professor with whom they were
unfamiliar.11 The implication of the current study is that the “trickle up” concern of some
educators1-3—that the informality of instant messaging and text messaging would adversely
affect more formal rhetorical situations—is not substantiated here.

However, the variability of the format and salutations and closings of the students’ emails to
employers and professors seems to justify some explicit instruction on writing emails to less
familiar audiences. Regular use of the typical email template, with its designated spaces for “To”
and “From,” may have influenced those students who omitted either the greeting or closing in
their emails. In these students’ minds, perhaps the use of either would have been repetitious and
a waste of time in a medium characterized by its speed and efficiency. Yet a potential employer
may see the omission of a salutation and/or closing as a lack of courtesy; in fact, an Internet
survey asking participants “Which Netiquette issues aggravate you most?” identified “including
no hello or thank you” as one “annoying behavior” in email use.19

The physical placement of email greetings and closings is another issue. Many of the students
included both greetings and closings in the text of their messages, without using vertical spaces
to separate them from the texts. For example, it was relatively common to see a phrase such as
“Hey, what’s up?” both set off by itself as a greeting in one email and as the first sentence of the
message in another. The same situation occurred in the closings, where some form of “Thanks”
could appear spaced down a couple of lines in one email, and serving as the final line of the
message in another one. In addition, students put the separated closing in various places between
the left and right margins, when traditional letter format would call for the closing to be flush
left. Finally, students need to pay attention to the use of signature files at the end of their emails.
Students often use this area to express a personal opinion or perhaps to highlight a favorite
quotation, and some signature file content may be offensive to unfamiliar recipients (eg.
typically sensitive topics such as sex, politics, religion, and race).10 Therefore, signature files
should contain only the student’s personal contact information.

Another formatting issue—not obvious, of course, in the students’ longhand emails—is how email
can differ from the way it looks on the writer’s computer screen to the way it appears on the reader’s
screen. To preclude this situation, at least one source mentioned the need to make certain that the
email text-wrap function is set below 76 so that the format will be easily readable for the recipient.10
Students can check the appearance of their email by sending it to themselves first before sending it
to its intended recipient. Finally, because it is not clear that our students have ever learned what
goes in email correspondence to potential employers, specific instruction in content (of a cover
letter, for example) should be taught along with the how, or formatting of the email. Websites such
as graduatingengineer.com and the online writing lab at Purdue University, and textbooks such as
Pocket Book of Technical Writing for Engineers and Scientists and The MIT Guide to Science and
Engineering Communication have helpful information on professional correspondence which can be
adapted to email.18,23,22
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Conclusion

Today’s students need to be prepared to communicate electronically with audiences throughout

the world. Since email may be their first (and perhaps only) contact with someone, students
must understand how the effort they put into their email will create a positive (or negative)
impression. Despite English being the lingua franca of the scientific/business world, email
writers need to be aware of culturally appropriate greetings and signatures. In addition, adopting
the appropriate tone in email discourse is very important to the reception and successful
interpretation of the intended message. Indeed, with the large numbers of international
undergraduates currently enrolled in North American engineering programs, we have an
additional obligation to instruct these students in the use of appropriately worded email
correspondence as many of them seek internships and full-time employment in North America
after graduation.

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