Email Etiquette for Students

I teach my students e-mail etiquette as part of their first lesson in accessing their Google Apps for Education accounts. My rules are not complicated, and they work really well for our particular students.

• Always include your name in the subject.  I don’t know who pinkfluffyunicorns1357 is.  Plus, it’s a good habit to get into because it might be a requirement in your college courses as well.  (For the record, I create very clear identification and log-in credentials for our student email accounts, but sometimes students use their personal email addresses – or a parent’s email address – to contact teachers.)
• Do not use text-speak.  If you use text-speak, your email will go directly to my trash bin, it will not pass go, and I will definitely not respond.  Ur BFF can read it and LOL, but I won’t.
• CUPS matter.  Capitalization, usage, punctuation, and spelling are your friends.  I expect my students to always be good writers (must be from being a middle school language arts teacher previously).
• Include a greeting.  Everyone deserves respect and dignity, so give your reader some when you email by typing Dear [name] or Hello [name].
• If you’re writing a teacher about a project or assignment, make sure you give some background information.  Our science teacher cannot remember what your science fair project is – she has at least 150 other students!
• Mind your manners.  Make sure you read your email out loud to yourself before you send it.  Is there anything there that could be misinterpreted as rude, insensitive, inappropriate, condescending, or demanding?  A student once sent me an email that looked a lot like this:  Send me the worksheet from today right now.  I was absent, and I’m going to bed in 30 minutes.  My response was:  I don’t think you’re one of my students.  MY students would never write an email like this.  (And I copied her parents, without attaching the worksheet…) 
  
• Do not forward jokes, games, or chain letters to your teachers or to your classmates. Unless it’s relevant to our learning, we don’t really need to share this stuff on school email.  In fact, send this to ten of your friends before midnight to avoid being cursed with bad email-writing skills for the rest of your life.
• Be careful what you do email to others.  If you would be embarrassed to have that information out in the open, it doesn’t belong in an email.  Too many students (and teachers) think email is a confidential means of communicating, but it’s not.  It only takes one click to forward that secret to the entire school.
• Signatures should have helpful information about you, like your name and grade.  A cute quote in your signature file is fine, but again, CUPS and manners are always important.
• Finally, Snopes is your friend.  If you must absolutely forward something to others, please at least check Snopes to make sure that those five-legged spiders that will turn you into a zombie and that million dollar bank deposit in Zimbabwe are real before you make a fool out of yourself.
• Want to add something to this list?  Please feel free to comment!