The suggestion about being careful about “Reply All” is a good one as well. Everyone doesn’t need to read all of the replies.

Personal e-mail should be written carefully, too, but anything even remotely professional should be written very carefully.

- Nate

For #1: I don’t think “being concise” in the sense of making emails as short as possible is a good rule of thumb to try and stick to. What if, for example, you were asking someone for help on a problem? Having been on both sides of this situation, just saying “I need help on number 5″ is concise, but also a sure way to invoke a negative response from the professor or teaching assistant. You want to include as much or as little information as relevant, which may or may not be “concise” or “long.” I also disagree that e-mails are a “quick” form of communication. In large organizations, they are the only way that people can convey information to many people in an efficient manner.

#9: Very important. Subject-less e-mails are the bane of my existence. Not only do they conceal the content of the message, it makes searching for the same email more difficult in the future.

#10: Sometimes attachments are unavoidable. How are you going to include the contents of say… a picture in an e-mail? You really can’t do it. As an alternative, I would suggest only sending files that are cross-platform formats. PDF is a good one. Unicode (UTF-8) text files are also good (although you could just send this in an e-mail, I suppose).

One important thing I noticed is missing- be extremely careful about “Reply” vs. “Reply All.” Some very embarrassing e-mails have reached my inbox when people inadvertently hit “Reply” and therefore sent their grade information to an entire mailing list of students instead of just the professor.

The most important rule for me is; don’t send [junk] other people don’t want.
I don’t want a funny email from someone I barely now, but the same email could be funny when I get it from one of my best friends. Is always who sends what.

Good post, especially on the keep it short part, in which I lack sometimes.

Stefan,
http://StudySuccessful.com

For the subject line, make sure you leave the class number and section number (ex. Engl 101, sec 3, Final Paper Question) so your professor knows who you are. To be polite, use a greeting (”Hi Dr. Soandso”) and a closing (Thanks, Kris Ryan) with your full name and maybe even the section number again.

If you are someone in an authority position (professor, advisor, etc) please be informative. With the example above, when the person didn’t leave the date and I couldn’t contact her, I emailed the professor in charge of the organization to ask her the date, and she said “oh, I’m sure it was listed in the other email.” It wasn’t. I only email people in authority positions if I can’t find the information elsewhere. I don’t want to waste their time, but they seem to think I do.

Oh, and no emoticons for professional emails. Gosh.