hey. i was wondering of your students write like this

Alas, yes, they do (however, I'm a non-native English speaker who teaches international students whose level of English is extremely varied, and there's not much I can do about grammar).

Anyway, during the first lesson I give the following pieces of advice (which are frequently ignored, though):

1. Sender address: please, use your institutional email address and avoid personal fancy addresses like "dirtydeedsdonedirtcheap@hardrock.com". But if you really want to use such an email address, at least configure the email client to show your real name and surname.
2. Subject: write a meaningful subject: if you don't put a subject and respect point 1, I'll surely delete your email without even reading it, thinking that it is spam.
3. Course information: please specify which course you are attending or have attended: I teach several courses and if you don't specify this I may not be able to answer (this piece of information is the most frequently missed).
4. Express your issues clearly: if you have long questions or complicated issues, just ask for an appointment instead.

I'd like to chime in as a student here. I tend to write my (initial) e-mails formally, however, many professors tend to reply in the most informal way possible. I often get replies like [sic]

Sure, can you b ethere 29/8 at 10am?

James

to my well-crafted "Dear Dr. Jamesson" e-mails. For students, this can be confusing: if I reply, should I go for "Dear James, I guess I can make it the 31st at 2pm" or still reply with "Dear Dr. Jamesson, I have a class the 29th. Could we arrange a meeting 31/8, for example at 2pm?" In my experience, many professors write their e-mails in an informal way (note that this may be specific for Dutch culture which is very informal to begin with). For students, this means that they'll continuously have to consider whether to continue writing formally, or whether the professor feels that that's highly necessary. For that reason, I don't think plainly ignoring students who don't write their e-mails in a formal manner is a good idea. Therefore:

1. Assume good intent. There are many reasons for students not writing their e-mails formally. This could include coming from a different social background (do you really want to ignore students who managed to make it from a disadvantaged position to university?!), an attempt to appeal to the 'personal' side of you as a professor (some of my friends write e-mails like that because they feel that professors will answer them more readily if addressed in an informal manner), or even being nervous about writing a professor. Don't assume all students are lazy - be that person who is happy if he can make the difference for one student in your class.
2. Reply as you would to a formal e-mail, and notify the student that you would like a more formal inquiry next time. Informal e-mails are usually perfectly understandable - there's no need to be condescending and pretend you don't understand informal e-mails. However, simply include a note at the start of your e-mail if you feel that the inquiry could have been more formal. Direct feedback is in my opinion one of the most important things in the academic world, so don't be afraid to simply (but politely) state that you want to be addressed more formally next time, and that other professors might appreciate that too.
3. Students talk. Believe it or not, but students sometimes talk about other things than alcohol and potential partners. It won't take long before the vast majority of students know that you prefer to be addressed formally. If more professors indicate this preference (since I imagine professors also talk about other things than research grants and potential partners), it won't take long before all students start writing all their e-mails formally. Of course, this process will have to be repeated with the new batch of first-year students. Keep in mind that the scope of being a professor goes beyond teaching the course contents, but that you are there to train students to be professional members of the academic community (otherwise, we could just get rid of all professors and only read the book instead).

I'd like to add the following, which I posted as a comment but I think it will help in understanding this answer (especially why I use 'informal' instead of 'sloppy' throughout this answer):

Informality displayed by professors can be confusing to students. This, combined with students' ill-conceived ideas of how much effort should be put into writing even informal e-mails, makes for the sloppy e-mails described by the OP. Key point: don't assume a student is lazy if that could potentially disadvantage a motivated but 'uneducated' student.

What can professors do to encourage properly written email messages from students?

A rather straightforward option, that I have seen various professors follow, is to either delay answers to non-properly written e-mail messages, or to outright ignore the respective e-mails.

One precondition that I see for this is that it needs to be clearly communicated to the respective students that this is what is going to happen (i.e., to be on the safe side, it should at least be clearly stated next to the professor's e-mail address on their website).

Advantages:

• The reaction (or lack thereof) has a direct effect. Some less motivated students might have a stance like "I don't care whether Professor XYZ complains about my writing style; as long as I get an answer to my request, everything is fine.", and with the (non-)reaction outlined in this answer, the point is that they do not get an answer to their request unless they send their request in an acceptable way.

Disadvantages:

• This is implicit feedback. A student might be genuinely unaware of the degree at which they are breaching professional protocol by writing all e-mails like text messages to their best friend. I consider this a weak disadvantage, given that
  • students are young adults who should have had plenty of opportunity (including respective lessons at school ...) to learn how to properly write letters and
  • a university is generally a "pull" system; if the attempt to communicate was inappropriate, it is the student's responsibility to find out why, not the university's to readily deliver a step-by-step tutorial for something that should already be known and that can realistically be found out rather easily. Of course, it might be easy for the professor to provide instructions on how to properly write an e-mail, or even specifically point out the issues with a particular student's e-mail. However, teaching such basic text editing skills is not the purpose of a university, it should be known at least from highschool. Moreover, readily serving a correction seems detrimental, given that it does not help students develop into autonomous people who fix their own problems instead of waiting for someone else to fix them.

I have a colleague whose signature looks like:

Dr. John DoeThing I Like to Study DepartmentUniversity of this Country(123) 456-7890doej@countryu.eduHello students: let's communicate formally. Let's start our e-mails with a greeting,make use of a meaningful subject line, and write in complete sentences. I think thiswill make our collaboration deeper and richer. Join me. -Dr. D

Det bästa sättet att hantera detta är på en bredare nivå och förklara reglerna under en introduktionskurs eller förberedande kurs för alla inkommande studenter. Till exempel, på vår avdelning, måste förstaårsstudenterna följa en kurs om akademiska färdigheter, och där pratar de också om att e-posta professorer. Det har också fördelen att studenter inte behöver hantera olika förväntningar från varje professor. Ett tecken på att det fungerar åtminstone i viss utsträckning: Studenter verkar lära sig på den kursen att de ska skriva med sitt namn och sitt studentnummer (något som jag aldrig förväntat mig och definitivt inte bad om), men de flesta av dem gör faktiskt underteckna detta sätt (åtminstone när du kontaktar mig först).

En professor ska presentera en "Uppförandekod" för studenterna, tillsammans med agendan, som förklarar förväntningar på alla saker som inlämning av läxor, kommunikation, testning, laboratorier etc. Om e-post är något som du förväntar dig att studenter behandlar på formell nivå, måste de få veta det uttryckligen. Vissa professorer är väldigt slarviga i sin egen presentation och kommunikationsstil. Så det är bra för eleverna att känna till alla förväntningar och acceptabel klasskultur. Se till att de vet att otillfredsställande försök inte kommer att ges fullständig granskning och kommer att få ett generiskt svar.

We now offer a 2 credit required course in professional communication, but it doesn't happen early enough.

The best solution I've found is that if I don't find a student's communications to be suitable, I respond to whatever their inquiry is as best I can, and include some statement telling them that I expect them to communicate with me at a professional level.

Meeting requests are a source of frequent problems.

Student: I hope you had a nice weekend. Can we meet?

Me: Sure. What would you like to meet about.

S: I'd like to drop a course

M: What course would you like to drop?

Now, we've just had four emails instead of two, and I still have no concept of whether a meeting is really necessary or if any prep work on my part is required. If our timing is off, and the student and I are out of sync with respect to working hours, this can delay a meeting (which usually doesn't need to happen in the first place) by days.

For meeting requests in particular, I demand all the info up front, because I don't like being surprised at a meeting by needing to run down information and then have another meeting. I explain to the student that there are rarely meetings that I don't put 15 minutes of preparation into, and that if they tell me all those details, we could save a whole lot of time.

Lately, during orientation, our undergrad committee chair offers a bit of coaching on effective email communication with advisers. I hope it helps.

Jag är doktorand, så mina e-postmeddelanden skickas vanligtvis till överordnade; Jag förväntar mig dock att få en hel del e-postmeddelanden när TA-ing säsongen börjar. Jag förväntar mig också att några e-postmeddelanden kommer att vara på samma nivå som ditt exempel.

Den här frågan väcker lite av ett problem för mig. Jag har två alternativ (även om många fler skulle uppstå om jag låter allmän artighet glida).

1. Jag kunde ignorera deras brist på ansträngning och bara svara på deras frågor till mina egna standarder. Jag är där för att hjälpa dem med fysik, inte språk; min auktoritet är försumbar ändå, och jag tänker verkligen inte försöka hävda någon sådan auktoritet genom att berätta för dem hur de kan eller inte kan kommunicera med mig. Heck, jag får betalt för att hjälpa dem, så jag borde nog hålla fast vid det.
2. Även om formaliteter är en ganska konstig konstruktion, finns de och de betyder en nivå av respekt (man kan argumentera för att detta är motsvarande en godtycklig tygbit bunden på ett visst sätt runt halsen betyder professionalism - det är bara något som vi snarare håller fast vid). Och så avancerad som vår art gillar att tro att den är, vill vi känna oss respekterade. Om jag skulle försumma min skyldighet att informera studenten att medan grundutbildning är en trevlig sandlåda där de är fria att göra misstag, kontakta viktigare personer (framtida doktorandledare, potentiella arbetsgivare, författare till relevanta artiklar etc.) i en sätt som kan anses olämpligt kan, troligtvis, ha några ganska hårda konsekvenser.

Detta går utifrån antagandet att deras e-postadress faktiskt är läsbar och att de inte faktiskt att vara stötande. Om det inte är det, eller om det finns möjliga tvetydigheter i några frågor, är det ett fantastiskt tillfälle: svara med lämplig nivå av formalitet och påpeka eventuella tolkningsfrågor och begära att deras e-post omformuleras mer uttryckligen.

En kollega av mig tilldelar en viss procentsats av betyget för "professionalism" i de kurser hon undervisar. Studenter som skickar dåligt skrivna e-postmeddelanden som ditt exempel får poäng avdragna i den kategorin med motiveringen att det är oprofessionellt.

(Andra möjliga avdrag: att ställa frågor som är tydligt besvarade i kursplanen, ha en telefon ring i klass etc.)

Förutom att introducera en kurs om akademisk kommunikation, som några av svaren nämner, kan du rekommendera en bok om akademisk kommunikation till studenter, till exempel den här. Ur mitt perspektiv har det många råd som dina studenter kan hitta relevanta.

Därefter finns det delar av netiketten som alla delar, och det finns delar som skiljer sig från professor till professor. Dina personliga preferenser för e-postkommunikation med studenter ska anges i kursens kursplan.

Your email communicates to me that you're still living in high school.Please try to communicate to your professors more formally. Thisexercises not only your ability to form well-crafted sentences, but conveys knowledge to your professorsthat you respect their time and their craft.

If the latter is not the case, then you won'tbe able to depend on timely (or perhaps even proper) answers inreturn.

[Edit: Sorry I can't but help keep that first sentence. Rewrite as proper.]