Reading Response Week 2
My favorite of the Ten Habits of Successful Emailers is number 3, "Take some time to edit and revise your message before sending it". I rarely remember to do this and it can and probably will cause some negative results if I don't start revising my emails before I send them. I don't know if anyone else thinks like this but I feel since I'm just emailing a professor and not talking to them face to face I don't have to write in a certain manner. Since usually I am emailing my friends or family I think I'm just used to not really caring if there are grammatical errors or misspellings in the email. However if I am emailing a teacher or perhaps a company I want to apply to, it could cause some problems if I don't proofread my email. It is a sign of disrespect if you don't take the time to write in a proper and professional manner because you are basically saying whoever you are emailing to is not important enough for you to spend the time to make sure you are writing in the proper form.
The other habit I felt was really important was number 1, "Reply promptly to email that requires a response, ideally within 24 hours, as you would a phone message". I had a problem with this one time when I emailed my roommates asking if my brother could store some stuff at our apartment over the summer while we were gone. My one roommate emailed me back immediately saying it was fine, however three days later I still had no response from my other roommate. Luckily I know my roommate pretty well so I was just able to call him and ask him. However if I was emailing someone who I didn't personally know I might have been uncomfortable calling them if I have never talked to them before. It is very important to respond as quickly as possible to an email that requires a response in order for the other person to see that you are giving them the respect that you want in return from them.
One habit I think that should be included is saving people in your address book. This may not be as important as some of the other habits but I feel like it is a good time saver. I put everyone who I email on a regular basis into my address book. This way if I need to email my dad about something I don't have to try to remember if I have the right email address I can just open the address book and the right email address is right there. Even though you only save a few seconds by saving emails into an address book I still feel like it is worth it since it will save time in the long run.
Comments
Reply
I would agree that many times I do not look over my emails to revise and review them before sending them out. I will sometimes use spell check if I feel that it is an important email, but I rarely pay close attention and reread what I have written. This could be a problem because there are some things that even spell check can not pick up. This could make you look bad or even be confusing to the person reading the email.
I also thought that habit number one was a very good one and also very true. Sometimes if you wait too long to respond to an email you will forget about it and this can be a problem, especially if it is about something important that the other person needs a reply on quickly. This can make you look unreliable and not very responsible if you take too long to respond to someone.
Address Book
I also felt that numbers 1 and 3 from the "Ten Habits of Successful Emailers" were very important. I sometimes feel that my professor is more of a friend especially if it is a teaching assistant and I don't often write in the proper manner when e-mailing certain TAs or professors. However, if the TA needs to forward my e-mail to the actual professor, I would be embarrassed if it wasn't written properly. I am going to take the advice from this class and edit my e-mails as well as writing more formally than I think I need to. One of my pet peeves is not responding to e-mails within 24 hours. I try to e-mail people in advance so I don't need an answer right away just in case they don't have time to respond but when it takes weeks for a response, it frustrates me.
I should definitely start saving e-mail addresses in my address book. I spend more time looking for an e-mail address in past e-mails from people. It would save me a lot of time to save addresses of people I e-mail on a fairly normal basis. Sometimes it takes me more than a few seconds to locate an old e-mail with the e-mail address I'm searching for so using the address book would save time in the long run and also ensure that the e-mail is going to the right person.
Reply
I agree with different contents and situations you use the ten habits of successful emailers to a different degree and some you wouldn't even use at all. When I write an email to a professor or in a professional situation I try to use all 10 habits of successful emailers but if I am just sending a quick email to a friend or family member I barley use any maybe one or two of them. One thing that I always use and that comes in handy for me in every email that I send is spell check! I am not a very good speller and I always use spell check whoever I am sending it to!
Ten habits
I thought both of those habits were very important for me as well. I normally have terrible spelling and grammar and I need to spend more time proofreading my documents before I send them out. The last thing I want is to be turned down for a job because I misspelled something in an email. I also was surprised with the number one habit of successful emailers, “reply promptly to email that requires a response”. I always looked at email more like regular mail in which a response could take a day or so. I know realize that I will need to check my mail more frequently and respond promptly.