English, baby!

E-Etiquette

Date: Aug 31 2007

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

hey,

when u write emails do you bother to capitalize letters or punctuate correctly. since email is so new, there aren’t really standardized rules for how to format them. some people prefer to make emails relatively formal, while others, perhaps because they send so many emails each day, write them as quickly as possible.

k, listen to kevin and mason talk about how they decide how formal an email ought to be.

thx,

ebaby

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Kevin

Mason

Kevin: So you know I teach at the university, and when my students email me, I notice such a range of ways in which they write emails.

Mason: But you’re teaching English, right?

Kevin: I teach Spanish.

Mason: Oh you’re teaching Spanish, so you’re dealing with English speaking kids writing emails.

Kevin: Correct.

Mason: Really? And there’s a lot of different style to it?

Kevin: Some are very friendly. Of course they call me Kevin, which is totally fine. They say, “Hey Kevin” and, you know, to me, anytime I write an email to, well, almost anyone, I would write their name and have a salutation at the end.

Mason: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Kevin: But a lot of people just don’t do that. I get “Hey,” and no name at the end. It’s unbelievable.

Mason: You know, well now that I think about it, people that I write a lot of emails to, like my coworkers, who I email maybe 10 times a day, we kind of do away with all formalities.

Kevin: Fair enough, fair enough.

Mason: It’s more or less like a text message.

Kevin: No capital letters?

Mason: Well, I’ll capitalize sentences. I mean, I respect sentence structure. I don’t abbreviate words. There’s no lol, bff sort of stuff. But you know, I won’t be as formal.

Kevin: That’s tricky.

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Discussion

As a professor at the university, Kevin gets quite a few emails from his students, and he says that they come in a range of formats. Mason initially thinks that the wide variance is because Kevin is teaching English to people who don’t fully know the language. But Kevin reminds him that he teaches Spanish, so most of his students are native English speakers.

It’s okay with Kevin that his students use a friendly tone in their emails. He lets them call him by his first name anyway. But it does bother him that sometimes his students don’t address him by name at all when they email him and that they often don’t sign their messages.

Mason says that when he sends emails to his coworkers, who he emails many times each day, there is almost no formality. He says the emails are almost like text messages. Kevin asks if Mason capitalizes and he says he does and that he doesn’t use Internet abbreviations either.

How do you usually format emails? Do you write them differently depending on who you’re sending them to?

Comments

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aziz1

Morocco

s'il y'a quelqun qui parle français j'en serais ravi de lui faire connaissence.excuse me i dont speak english very wel and tankyou.

boss4eva

United Arab Emirates

i prefare to abbreviate words coz its easier and faster and about the name of the person who send the messege i think he has to write his name

naazia

Pakistan

nice lesson

emilywujia

China

It's only way of your

emilywujia

China

It's only way of

emilywujia

China

It's only way

emilywujia

China

It's only

emilywujia

China

It's

tear_drop

Poland

When I write an e-mail to my teacher, or person which I don't know I always use formal language because of respect, when I write to my friend an e-mail looks completely different, but I always use punctuation and follow the grammar rules.

When we know someone just from e-mailing, the e-mails create the image of that person so we have to remember that e-mail ( the way we use language, style etc. ) tells about ourselves

Johnny bai

China

It is a trends to abbreviate words in web writing which called , i think, internet language. You can see anywhere in website, say comments, email, threads. It's amazing the power of internet, which drives some kinda cool words popular in shore time. So don't exclude them, just enjoy them.

sweet daffodil

Iran, Islamic Republic Of

Actually it is a necessity sometimes to write formal, but I like Kevin’s way as I have experienced in Ireland.

salsalover

China

Absolutely we have to decide the formality by the person we'll send to. Though most of people who have a higher position don't care about it, we need to be formal to show our respect. Formality of writing would give others a good impresson of ourselves. So try to be.

naddito

Saudi Arabia

good note in writing fields cause nobody cares about the destruction we cause to language

naddito

Saudi Arabia

i think it depends on the type of msg and the person to whom im sending. so, if iam sending to a teacher , it should be formal not like the one to a friend or relative.

kelly07

China

hahaloulou

lynn0327

China

ACTUALLY IT IS RELATED TO OUR LIFE.

lynn0327

China

er…actually i don't formate my email too.and i think this is way of youth. um..that's all.

stevenzlt

China

to form a good habit is very important even though sometime we are really busy to make the mail as simple as possible…........

Island

South Korea

It's interesting to know that English speaking students vary in writing e-mails. As a non-native speaker, I was confused about the format of writing e-mails from time to time. In my language, it' very often to leave out a receiver's name at the beginning partly because you know who you are talking to, and we don't put "regards", "best wishes" or a sender's name at the end, except official e-mails. Now I'm used to the formality, but it took me a while to do that.