 In this session, we are going to talk about internet communication because some of the principles from what we discussed in terms of technical communication is slightly different. So I am going to talk about internet communication but it is important to know that I am still talking about emails which are exchanged in a technical context. I still am not talking about business letters or emails or invoices or exploratory emails. I am not talking about them. I still am talking about technical mails and in what context you will write and how they should be written and what are the general rules and things like that. Now there is huge amount of type of internet communication that happens. Many of you might be very active in social networking sites, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp, that is one and many of you might go look up information like Wikipedia, things like that and some of you might be writing blogs or might be reading blogs and then you write emails. In the order of importance, I think email is something that everybody does and probably then there is social networking but very few people use it for technical context. So I have put it at the bottom even though I think it will be a very nice exercise for those of you who are doing a PhD or who have done a PhD or who have written a paper to see if within 140 letters you can communicate what is it that you have done. There was recently some in Twitter there was a competition, 140 letters you have to tell a short story and somebody got a prize. So you can think of it. I mean this is probably the biggest challenge that you can take for yourself. You have a thesis typically running into hundreds of pages in one tweet. Can I say what the thesis is about? That is the essence of communication and of course people cheat even when I tweet if it is more than that I slice it and post it as the answer to the same tweet and things like that. Maybe five tweets it takes to say something which is one piece of information but blogs in Wikipedia are very commonly used and very widely used for communication and in fact I had written a paper with one of my co-authors whom I never met. I met him two years after the paper got published. All the interaction happened through Vicky. So he used to write, I used to correct, I used to give questions, he used to answer and there are Vicky pages which will allow this latex type of marking because our work is very equation heavy. So we even did everything, editing the equations, the questions, my advisor was also involved. So two, three of us in different cities. My advisor was in Bangalore, the student was in Madras, I was in Chicago and we wrote this paper together, we published it, after a couple of years of publication I met the author. So today it is possible for you to interact with collaborators who could be in any corner. I have collaborators with whom I am writing papers but they are sitting in Taiwan and US and Europe. And it is also more common these days, for example there is a national resource center for materials in IASC Bangalore and they have collaborators from all over this country, wherever metallurgy material science is being taught, those professors can come, interact with them, their students can come, do experiments, go back and then they will collaborate over long distance. So in this day and age then this kind of communication mediums are used very extensively and it should be used, otherwise what is the purpose? So after all all the internet came up, you know why, anybody know why internet came up? Which technical information? Physics. Physics, which physics? Physics. Physics. Huh? Physics. Physics. Physics. Physics. No, not different. Physics. Physics. So I think it is some high energy physics experiments where they were generating large amounts of data which they wanted to analyze and so they started sending and that is how it started. So all this is for some such lab, I do not remember exactly but yes some such lab and defense some people say because some funding was also from I think DARPA but in any case. So it is for sharing information that this entire exercise started, of course we share lots of information, some of it is social, some of it is technical and mostly you will see blogs in Wikipedia, there are lots of technical content. I have not seen too much in Twitter but I think this workshop should start that revolution. There is a strong scientific community in India which tweets, so that will be nice to have and emails is something that everybody writes. So I am going to concentrate mostly on email, I will not concentrate on others but in the online version and in the other session in December we might have some exercises there too because there will be writing exercises. So again, this is what I think. You should disagree, you might disagree and I do not have a problem with that. Even with people who have like-minded this thing we all do not agree all the time so it is okay but this is something that I think and you do not take it just because I said so, you decide how you will do it. The first thing is it is preferable to have your email ID as your name, nicknames as email IDs is not very professional. Now I know that some email software will suggest you that you can put some numbers with your names and things like that as much as possible you should avoid it. If you are writing a technical mail, a professional mail, it should go from your name. I have my full name, that is how your email ID should be as much as possible. I know that some common names are there where you cannot but there are always initials, there are always this ways of .mp, there must be thousands of Guru Rajan's I know. So I am not going to get Guru Rajan. But I can make it still very specific and very perfect. No nicknames, no names with multiple meanings, no funny names, no numbers as much as possible. At least you have the choice of doing it with your official email. Maybe Yahoo and Google does not give you but official email you can always have unless there are policies. I know that there are places where the policy is only the initials and things like that. But even if it is you should talk to your administrator and tell them that this is not very professional. Professional is to have proper name in your email ID. So it is preferable as much as possible you should use. So why do we write emails? Of course for the same reason why we do anything related to communication. You want to get information, you want to communicate information, you want to collaborate, you want to resolve disputes. You want to complain. You are very unhappy with what happened. You traveled by air and then there was your baggage did not arrive properly or something you checked in. It was broken or you sent a courier and the courier has not reached it is one week. So you will write a mail. And so sometimes it happens that somebody has written a complaint. Somebody is asking you why this happened. Someone has written to the dean that he did not give me a proper exam or he did not correct it properly or I deserve 80 marks, he has given only 40 marks, you may have to explain. But please remember there are many things that you can say person to person which you cannot write down in an email. Not because there is anything wrong with it, not saying you are not writing it because it is okay to say because there is no record unless somebody is recording. Only because when you say things, the communication happens not just with what you say but with your body language and with your gestures and how the person perceives. You know even if I start saying something, if I perceive that the person is not taking it in this fashion, I will change it and I will change it instantaneously. That is not possible when you have sent a mail. Somebody reads the mail. How in what tone that person is going to read the mail is something over which you have no control. So you have to assume that the person is going to read in whichever tone he or she wants and in whatever tone they read, it does not sound arrogant or complying or demeaning. How do we do this? We do this by putting markers. You might not say please and thank you when you talk but in emails please use them frequently. Never sign off a mail without regards or greetings or best wishes. If you are addressing somebody, always try to address with the maximum possible respect. You want to address somebody, you want to send a mail, you do not know whether and so and so is a miss or a doctor. Use doctor. It is okay for them to say that I am not doctor, call me miss. But if they are doctor and if you have called miss, that is a problem. You want to call somebody professor, please call professor. Let them say that I am not a professor, call me doctor. Not even your students unless you are familiar, address them without miss or miss. Even in classes sometimes if I am very angry, I always address my students as sir or madam to say that I do not have anger against the person but against the action. But these kind of markers are extremely important when you do not have a control over how the person is going to read the mail. What tone they are going to use, what mood they are in, I mean the same line might mean different to that person depending on when and how they are reading. So it is very, very important that when you write all this. If you are writing for example to get information, first line should be I am writing this mail to get this information. That would be very clear if I go and knock on somebody's door and I am going to ask some information, my tone and my way will tell them that I am going to ask for information. I am asking for help, I am making a request. But that might not how it will sound when you send a mail. I have seen n number of students making this mistake. I am sure that when they are reading the mail in their minds, they are reading with a tone which is very polite but when I am reading that mail I am not reading it with very polite tone for whatever reason. Then that affects. So you should know like your technical thing, what is it that question I am asking when you are writing mail also you should be clear as to why you are writing the mail. That should be the first line of your mail. Thank you very much for your mail. I am answering to this query. I am writing this mail to complain against this thing that happened on such and such type also. So there are more things of this type. So in other words a good email has lots of markers and aphastrophes, scamas, colons and whatever markers which will also tell about the tone. So you should use them as extensively as possible. This is the format of emails. All of you have written emails I know but still sometimes people have a tendency to send a mail without subject. You should not do. People have a tendency to write just high and then mails should not do. People have a tendency to mail 10 people at the same time where the information is irrelevant. You should not do. People have a tendency to reply in a group for a mail for which they are answering to a specific person to the entire group. You should not do. Okay. So there are lots of things that you should not do simply because you are writing it in a professional technical context. Okay. Now first is subject. There should always be a subject and it should be as pithy as possible. It should be as directed as possible and all of you have this experience probably you know you are away for half a day come back open the email there are 150 emails. Most of them are of course trying to sell me some cent or something but there are also some 15 mails in between some of them from the dean some of them the students and some of them are very urgent because the student has suddenly realized that he or she needs a recommendation letter by this evening. Now when I come and look at the mails I am also trying to scan and decide which ones are important. Of course first you take all these promotion mails junk them and then look at the remaining mails and then if there is a mail from dean and if there is a mail from student I am going to read the dean's mail assuming that it is important. It might not be that important. But I would know provided in your subject you have written that request for recommendation letter urgent or something like that. So you should always write and also you should not abuse subject when it is not urgent please do not write it. And next should be the address. Like I said you should always address as politely as possible. It is okay to call somebody who is not a professor as professor than to call somebody as doctor. Similarly it is always better to call somebody as doctor than to call somebody as mister. So depending on the context please use the maximum greeting that is available for you. Then this is slightly American this is not common. So when I write mails so I write dear okay so professor Sundar do you put a comma or do you put a colon? Just use colon and generally we are used to writing comma. What is the difference? Why should you put a colon? Okay so it is just a marker suppose if you are very busy I am walking into your office I want to talk to you I will call your name I will wait for some time okay. If I have more if I want to show more respect I will wait for longer till the person's attention comes back to whatever I am asking for. So colon basically tells that you are being extrapolate okay it is okay to call Sundar this is what I want but if I know that Sundar is very busy I do not know when the mail reaches him maybe it reaches him when he is really busy then I call Sundar then I wait. Only when Sundar gives his attention to me I am going to say now the colon that you have put basically tells that you are addressing the person and you want to give a long pass the long pass is basically to indicate that okay so I am giving a pass so that you can give your attention to me. So again this is a marker this is not Jamsen random put comma put colon yes ma'am what is that I do not know so you should not do that is what I am telling in you know if I write a mail to my friend that is okay no no no if you are writing mails please do write as much of punctuation as possible like somebody noticed with Subramanian Chandrasekhar's writing this morning punctuation is what basically tells a person how to read something okay especially when you want to convey tones punctuations are the best way of conveying tones and of course there is also the error of using more punctuation than necessary in these internet communication there are for example emoticon and when you are using emoticons each one has a meaning and some of them are not to be used in professional context okay people tend to use it this indiscriminately for example there is a smiley face there is a smiley face this just means a smile but there is this which also means that you are so you should not write this winking emoticon when you're writing a professional mail but people have a tendency you know they think that this is smiley face it is not this is a smiley face so now if you don't know please don't use it if you are using it go look up there are lots of dictionaries which will tell you which means what and some of them are not meant for communicating with your students or with your colleagues or with your superiors again I mean I know this because students write they sense mails like this I'm sure they don't mean to wink at me okay but they don't realize yes sir as ma'am pointed out nowadays in modern business communication we are advised to use open in punctuation right that is business communication in technical communication please don't do oh thank you very much okay businesses are becoming more friendly maybe but technical people are very very conservative okay so for whatever reason there are also there are cultural differences you know I have heard this from somebody if it becomes like that that is very unfortunate but technical should not be business yes sir open letter format nowadays there are two two letter writing types one is a closed type and open type and when we come under open time so close the type it's supposed not to use a punctuation mark it says that's what and announced he also is advising to what's called a practice such letters only I understand but that is business communication no no no I'm talking with technical English that is communication technical communication only please don't do technical communication even if you are writing email that is just a replacement for paper and pen please please don't do this is my advice of course I am being very conservative like I said I mean I can call just Sundar and with a comma I can write a mail I would still put a colon because I'm trying to convey some information that I cannot convey by just writing okay so because of which please as much as possible use as many of the punctuation marks as possible to communicate what is your tone okay yes the punctuations are a necessary part of what we are trying to communicate and more and more necessary when we are communicating in the written medium because they mean the correct pauses and gaps which are not there when we are writing so it is the open punctuation does not at all mean that we have to do away with the communication with the punctuation marks whatever marks are necessary they have to be there like what this colon means it has to be there doing away with this mean means it will mean that you know writing it in a more casual or less formal way which we do not mean in our informal communication I might I might be exchanging mails with somebody either with that person in a informal context like I mean for example I'll give you another example I call like I said my advisor by name I always call him abhi but if I am writing a mail from here requesting him to come and give a talk in our department the letter still goes as the dear professor Abhinandan with the colon I am writing this mail to request you to come and visit us on such and such date and give such and such talk it is true with him also he might write a mail to me on some personal thing without even address okay that the mail might start that this this this this but if he's writing an formal invitation to me he still addresses me as dear professor Guru Rajan with colon okay now this has got nothing to do with who you are writing so but the context in which you are writing okay the the example that you gave right now now I just want to ask is that a part of business communication or it is a part of technical communication I think it's very difficult to do business is when I say I will pay you thousand rupees can you come and do it for me I write a mail to somebody that I want one kilogram of copper billet what is the cost but I am asking professor Abhinandan and to come and give a talk in my seminar is technical please remember technical has several aspects there is a social aspect of technical it doesn't become business is for me only when there is a transaction and it's a business transaction okay so now you might think that buying a copper billet is technical it is not for me because with the person with whom I am buying the copper billet it's a technical business relationship but I might write my to my collaborator in Sweden asking for a cold rolled copper sample same information I'm asking from both can you get me one kilogram billet of copper one kilogram of rot copper sample but to the other person when I write I will write dear professor so and so we are trying to do this experiment I understand that you produce this could you please share a billet for us for our experiment so please remember it's the context dependent okay same thing you are asking you are asking two different people one will be considered as business communication another one will be considered as technical communication basically because the guy who sells me billets don't care how I address or how much impatient I am okay but in the other context it's not so I'm not looking that's what I said I mean if I write to him as advisor I might write to dear abhi because that is my advisor student relationship but when I am writing as a faculty member asking for sending a draft copy of your paper and asking the comment right there is also necessary whether there is also necessary that depends on how what kind of relationship you have with your advisor for me I still used to write dear abhi this is the latest draft thanks thank you sir I personally think use a punctuation mark is not about being conservative or being respectful to that addressy normally we have certain conventions and using open punctuation style is one of the convention that we normally follow in our latest in our latest okay that doesn't show this you know that your courtesy or that doesn't show disrespect to your addressy at all okay the only thing is that you can avoid some of the punctuation marks in the sections like you know that your salutation part or in heading part or or this or the concluding sections of your later or your formal that in your formal document just to reduce the the amount of effort that you put in in that process okay that's what I'm telling you might think that this is the point the point I'm trying to tell you might not how it will be perceived always the point on the paper side sir the point I'm trying to tell you that we we cannot we cannot avoid using punch punctuation mark punctuation marks in the main body of the text the text main body because the change in punctuation mark will change the semantic aspect of the point I am trying to make is different in the greetings and when you are signing off you can save some effort by not putting punctuation mark it might even be taken in the right spirit that this is just to save some effort to this punctuation is removed but there is no guarantee that under all circumstances it will be read in that fashion so if you want to be on the safer side please use punctuation but but use a comma like I said this is my personal opinion you are welcome to try other things I am not stopping you but because I am teaching now this is my opinion please use as much punctuation as possible open punctuation keep it out of technical communication okay you don't know how an editor in Sweden perceives your letter please nobody is going to take a class for him as to what open punctuation mean that person was born and brought up in 1945 where sitting in the kitchen from his mother if he wants to say something he has to ask with please okay so cultural context are different so please don't if you are writing technical be conservative use as much of punctuation as possible this is very very important in my opinion you are welcome to write the other type of mails if it works for you all the all the same to you okay sir punctuation is necessary and you also you have said that the relationship is very important right if I am going to address my friend he's very close I'm meeting after a long time right I think there is no please I mean I'm not talking anything other than my technical communication common supplementation here if I'm going to address my friend who is who I have seen after a long time I can even use an exclamation mark I'm not talking about that kind of mails please I'm not teaching here business writing or letter writing okay you you write whatever you want to your friend I'm talking in a in a technical context okay I okay let me be very clear I'm talking about mails that you write to your students mails that you write to your colleagues mails that you write to your superiors mails that you write to your collaborators mails that you write to editorial boards journals funding agencies you know you can't say you send a mail to DST secretary or some some official in DST for your project you can't say this is open punctuation please don't do he might even be okay with open punctuation to be on the safer side please put all the commas all the colons and send the letter okay so this is what I mean okay now many a ties when you write an email if you are writing for the first time you also need to introduce yourself now this first time is the very context specific thing for example I might write to the dean once and after three months I'm again I am writing to the dean the context is different say for example first time I wrote to the dean as a new faculty member joined the department after three months I am writing because I have a problem in the hostel where I am the warden please introduce yourself again even with the dean even if you are writing in your capacity as a faculty member if your second mail is after six months please introduce yourself okay because the dean might be getting lots of mails from faculty members you are one person meeting the dean and you think that the dean knows me and he might even know you okay but that does not mean that in all contexts the moment he sees a mail without reading what is the name that you have signed off with and even then sometimes the dean might not remember who it is okay so depending on the context I don't want you to introduce yourself for a mail exchange that is happening for the past one week for example first time you wrote I am so-and-so I'm a faculty member in this department this is why I'm writing and he has written back you are writing back something and at that time I don't want you to say again that I am so-and-so writing okay that is okay but in suppose you are writing after a long break or you are writing to somebody who you know will get lots of mails of this type or you are writing to the same person in a different context please introduce yourself please say that I am Guru Rajan I am writing as the warden of this particular hostel regarding this problem okay so the greeting and introducing yourself is also very very important again this is a little bit conservative okay there is a extra sentence about you are introducing yourself if the dean knows who you are Guru Rajan after that he might want to skip but that option is his or hers I'm not going to make that decision as far as I am concerned I'm going to write a professional email okay now when you describe the rest of it the body of what you are writing people make the mistake of not splitting it into paragraphs okay that is the big no no we read information by bunching information together so every new thought in your email even if it is one sentence they should all be different paragraph okay every new thought should be a different paragraph this is very very important suppose you are describing a complex situation you describe what happened you describe what needs to be done you describe what are the ways in which this can be handled so some of them could be quite complex and if it is going to be a long email even at the beginning you can say I'm going to write this long mail to address these these these issues so that that will serve as a marker so that the dean can read the relevant paragraphs but there should be a paragraph wise sectioning that should happen please remember email might be shorter communication but writing a good email takes actually longer than writing everything down okay it's always true in the as far as writing is concerned being shorter is much more difficult than being very elaborate and if you are writing to people whom you know you they are going to be very busy you should also be as concise and as precise as possible okay and then you have to sign off sign off should be done with full name please don't sign off with your nicknames and you should have a signature file which has lists your name your designation your group your department whatever the alternate emails if necessary so this is a more professional email that you would write in a technical context editors to whom you write authors to whom you write and the collaborators generally it doesn't happen after a couple of mails you are your close maybe you don't need it but if you are establishing collaboration for first time or requesting somebody for some help for first time then it is better that you write like this so that people can see the mail and they can understand that you are very professional in the way you deal with these things okay the subject should be very short because there is only some n letters it shows and it should contain all the vital information you should know your recipients okay and you are you should tune your subject according to your recipients maybe it is the same talk seminar notice you are sending when you send to your group your students and when you send to the department it need not have the same subject okay depending on what you want or what action you expect you can tune so please don't send common mails to everybody okay that is another common problem that I have found please don't send common mails before sending any time you send a mail to more than three or four people you have to think if whether it is essential whether there is a way to split it in smaller groups and send the mail in smaller groups or whether everybody needs to know all this information okay this can avoid lots of trouble if you can do it professionally okay and never leave the subject blank and if you are forwarding sometimes it is better to change the format because it has come after 15 forwards so in the subject all I can see is FWD FWD FWD okay please edit it make it easier for the other person to follow what the mail is about okay address as dear so and so again I have a different opinion lots of people write respected the so and so and you know please don't do any of that generally it is not expected that's what I'm telling you should also know when to be conservative in what way to be conservative to call somebody respected goes beyond being conservative and that is you know at some level I think that is degrading I mean professor is a professor what is respected about my best is respected for some of his ideas and maybe a couple of papers so I don't think because of that everybody has to address professor all the time as respected and this is true for Dean director whoever it is dear director you can write dear professor so and so you can write respected director is not needed that is you know more respect than is necessary okay in my opinion because it is still professional you call somebody dear director I am writing this mail to complain about this that is it done don't need it okay and okay so the the colon we have discussed and never write professional mails just dear or just a dear mister okay it's a slang to call somebody as just a dear mister okay please don't address anybody and if you don't know the person's name address with the person's position call dear assistant registrar okay it's okay if you know his name you can say dear doctor Varma that is different but just don't leave it a dear mister okay and yeah so respected esteemed and all please avoid it's not really required in professional context okay so when the gender of the reader is not known right how to address him or her dear madam slash sir but actually again please don't mistake me because we've been training students and business English certificate so in which we are not supposed to use dear sir or man then what do you do so but actually nobody is giving a very clear answer for this address non-gender specific terms are okay dear professor for example doesn't say whether the professor is man or woman okay dear doctor is okay if you don't know okay it is always okay to write a dear madam slats are for example you might write to a journal the copy editor has sent some corrections to your English okay you don't know whether the copy editor is so you write dear madam slats are okay dear editor is okay or dear copy editor is okay for all you have to address you can write madam slats are nothing wrong with that okay so finish with regards best regards sincerely best wishes thanking you looking forward to hearing from you can use whatever you want sign off with full name and you know sometimes there is also a cultural thing sometimes people sign off if you sign off with your nickname for example if I sign off a mail to somebody as a guru then that is just an indication to the other person that I am okay being called guru okay sometimes in that context it might mean that if I sign off as guru Rajan I am telling the other person that I want to be addressed as guru Rajan okay so but that is very very context specific that doesn't have for example you might write a letter to the journal editor whether you sign off as guru or guru Rajan he is going to look up your name as it is in the paper and that is how he or she is going to address okay but in some other context you know you are contacting some professor maybe a couple of males have been exchanged if you consistently sign off with a nickname then the person will think that that is how he or she would like you to address that is how they will read this information by the same token most of the times they also expect that if they have signed off saying Peter they expect you to say dear Peter okay now personally I never do that unless I am explicitly told that please don't address me as this address me as this okay but convention you know allows you this freedom that if you want you can address like that but that is a personal decision I generally don't do unless I'm explicitly told that you know please address me like this and similarly I also write to people if I think that they should not be addressing like this I write saying that please address me as this now after somebody tells you please address me like this not addressing them with that is also wrong that is also considered as impolite if somebody tells please call me Peter if you keep calling them as professor over here then you are disrespecting the person this is again a cultural thing if they tell you so it is better for you to be on the safer side okay but if you are told to do this please do it don't have any hesitation okay not doing that is not going to get you any brownie points and there is no brownie points to get in this case either okay if somebody tells you're trying to collaborate you're trying to interact you have to exchange four mails and says okay please call me this please switch from next mail onwards to that address okay when you meet in person you might even adjust how you address but that is a different issue and I generally don't like people who sign off with titles no some people sign off sign off as Dr. Guru Rajan again I don't like it because it has that connotation when you say when you sign off a letter saying Dr. Guru Rajan you're basically demanding that the receiver call you always as Dr. Guru Rajan okay so please don't do that if you have anything like a doctor you put it below in your affiliation whatever you know professor distinguished professor fellow of this society that society everything can go in the signature when you sign off you should sign off just with your name okay and please don't have in your formal sign off codes or jokes or you know things like that they are okay for other email exchange but in your formal email exchange you should not have anything of that sort okay so most email programs allow you to have a signature file you should generate a good one and you should keep it and it should be updated you know sometimes you send a mail they might want to contact you and if there is a phone number there it had better be operating it should not I should not get a message that you know this number does not exist okay so please give postal address phone numbers alternate email addresses sometimes people try to respond and the email is not reaching it is bouncing if there is an alternate email if that information is there then they can work with it okay and any other information you might think is relevant should be there okay again this is something that we have already discussed partly always start your mail by greeting or introducing yourself if it is delayed please write I'm sorry for the delay in writing to you right I'm so-and-so I'm writing in this capacity okay and or if you're writing in some other capacity please let the people know that that is a capacity in which you are writing this mail okay so so for everything you should start a new idea you should start a different paragraph and these kind of markers you are writing for what should be part of it again to avoid how it is being read okay so so they basically do the job of tonal cues I mean polite people behave in some manner so email also has its own politeness indicators okay I'm all that I'm saying is that please follow them it might look over polite to you but it is okay than to sound impolite okay so so because of this never write all capital okay writing all capitals on online communication forum means that you are shouting okay please don't do that never okay there are much more better ways of saying things forcefully than shouting okay one of them is to say that I'm extremely unhappy and I'm writing this letter to complain I mean that has a much more of a impact than in all caps that what did you do okay okay so and don't use any unexplained abbreviations it might be common in the circles in which you work it is not necessary that it is known to everybody and this happens even in for example in the hostel we might say something for someplace but the dean doesn't know that that is commonly called that so it is better to expand the abbreviations when you're writing so depending on context you should know what not to abbreviate and please never send any mail with spelling errors always do a spell check and the auto spellers and completions are very dangerous okay after you write the mail please always read one before you say send and even when you send there are email programs which allow you to have an option of taking it back about a minute or so for example Google allows please switch on that facility okay sometimes you hit send then you realize something is wrong I received a mail last week saying dear professor Preetapant I'm also trying to contact professor Guru Rajan can you be there at that time okay so person is using the same template so I wrote to him saying that I am assuming that you are trying to address professor Guru Rajan if so this is my answer okay so please don't do that so no single mass writing okay paragraph structure is important punctuations are important and email structure is important okay leave enough space between address with regards a signing signature everything okay so it's always a good idea especially if you are angry not to send the mail immediately especially if you are angry it is a very good idea to send the mail through two or three people before sending okay there are some couple of really nasty mails from which I was saved because my seniors told me that yeah this mail reaps very nice now delete the draft and go home good advice just because we have a mean of means of communicating something we don't have to communicate and I think when we are angry when we are upset especially in the technical things you know a paper is rejected and you think it is unfairly rejected it's very easy to write a nasty mail and regret it for the rest of your life please don't do it okay you should I mean if you think it is unfair you should fight it but you should fight with the dignity and without losing your cool it's okay after one week if you are still convinced that you want to write this mail send it but reading that mail people should understand your anger as well as how much dignified you are in your tone how much you are holding back that is what gives impact not the shouting okay so switch on the retract email option if possible compose elsewhere cut and paste and then send it's always a good idea to have somebody read okay and never send a mail when you are angry upset or in a hurry okay these are prescriptions for mistake okay now this is another thing which you should be very careful so so email IDs especially the professional ones that you have should be considered like your credit card or one-time password whatever so please don't share it with anybody and don't play pranks with emails okay and they are legal documents by the way at least at IIT they are legal documents anything that I write in an email is equivalent to my writing it on a piece of paper and signing that is why the password I can't say somebody else has taken it that will not be considered as for Jen okay if somebody has taken my email and sent it it's my problem unless I can prove criminal intent that I didn't give that person hacked okay so now there are some more email etiquette points that I want to be prompt in your reply be simple direct and short do not sign up for messages so there is some some cue box a mailbox I don't know what it is there are people who sign up for such services which unnecessarily flood the email boxes of the people who send you mails okay be careful will you sign up for them but not with your professional account the the professional account you use for sending mails to editors and your collaborators and your dean please keep them away from these kind of services you don't need any of those services for them okay and and there are also email services which will look up your address book and send and sometimes they send you know generalized email and address in a very unprofessional manner and and not very pleasant okay people can get upset if it happens okay so so people you know will will ban you from sending them mails it can happen and not for your mistake I mean just because some stupidity of this art that can get you in trouble so please don't and email communication also means it is very fast which also means that people do expect to replies within some time frame okay if there is going to be a delay you know you are working on it you want to reply after a week immediately for acknowledgement send a mail saying that yes I have received it will take so much of time for me to respond and keep the time okay and once you say I'll do it you should do it within the timeline and you have to be extremely careful with attachments unless you know people very well and unless you know that they are okay with the attachment don't send huge attachments and you know some people also have a tendency to click send oh it's not going send then I get four mails with the huge attachment in my mail box and of course next day I'm going to shout at that student okay please don't do that and use emails sparingly and professionally in the professional context again I'm not talking about other emails that you write in the professional context for example just because you have a email does not mean that you will write every time once in two months to the editor about the review of your paper please don't do okay reminder mails are different and they have to be written in some fashion so it takes some time if you want to write you should take that time and write in that manner okay there are very tough emails that all of us have to write time to time okay one scenario that I can think of is your paper got a nasty review and you are not happy about the review how will you write a polite but proper mail that the editor cannot take offense about the way you have complained but we'll consider your complaint okay one conducting a conference you have rejected a paper in the author of the paper has written your nasty mail okay you want to say no but you want to say it politely and you want to say it firmly okay and you can also you might also want to say that you don't appreciate this tone in the mail now how do you say all this politely okay okay so you want to go for a conference the registration fee is too high you want to ask for a fee waiver how to ask for it okay so you have met some researchers in the conference where you went and there is always a good thing to keep contacts and the way to do is to send a mail after you come back but again this mails have to be written very very professionally so that the person who receives the mail would like to keep in touch with you and would not see you as somebody who is bothering okay how do you do how do you do without over signaling means you know you are trying to latch on to the person or you are trying to extract something out of the person so the person who is receiving the mail should not get that feeling and that is where you know dear respected professor kind of things actually backfires against you should not write you met the professor in the conference and then you write this extra humble letter can put off people okay so you don't want to do that either you want to be very professional you want to sound very professional but your aim is to keep in touch with the professor how do you do that okay so I wanted to actually like Suntha did wanted to do some exercise to read some random mails and then try to give a comment unfortunately it wouldn't be possible now but in the December session we will do some of it and in the online session also we will do some of it okay okay so I think time for coffee and then we will have discussion over coffee