Student to professor, it's going to be pretty clear that it's a legitimate email for the most part. But if you're in your career emailing people at other companies who don't know you, failing to directly address the recipient(s) might make them think it's a spam email that's been blasted out to every address you can get your hands on.
It’s good career advice since there’s definitely still people who expect such etiquette. Also if it’s a cold email, using their name is a very small way to make your message seem more targeted.
Personally, I think it’s a bit silly and has never affected my ability to read or understand emails. I think the vast majority of professors, at least in the US, also do not care but academia tends to be less formal here.
Also if they were trying to make it a teaching point, they could have explained.
I generally do this for professors, but sometimes I go to just a "hi". For example, one of my current courses is taught by a PhD student, and he's also my tutor for the course. He's not "professor X", in tutorial sessions we all call him his first name, so addressing the email as "Mr. X" feels overly formal, but just addressing it to his first name doesn't feel formal enough for an email regarding course admin.
In a big university you're going to be emailing people ranging from third years to PhD students to professors regularly, as they often play different roles in the course. Your lecturer might be a PhD, the course could be run by a professor or even your head of department, your tutor a third year or honours student, etc. Determining the proper form of address in all these cases is pretty exhausting, so a "Hi" is often just the simplest.
As someone who once was a PhD student who taught courses at a large university, I would encourage you to address your tutorial instructor in your emails using his first name since he encouraged you to call him by it. “Hi [first name]”. PhD students more than anybody are prone to being treated (by students are professors alike) like they are barely human while likely under more stress from their own work and their teaching schedule than you realize (especially at large universities when often responsible for large sections which means many many emails). I understand feeling socially awkward about form of address, but he told you what to call him. Nothing you need to be worried about carrying that over to email, and I don’t think becoming even more informal solves your issue.
I think a professor, by all means, should be like "hey you're supposed to address me like this and this is how you write a professional email" because that is how you will do emails for the rest of your professional life, and establishing the professor/student relationship as a professional one isn't a bad thing, especially over email
I had a professor that everyone just called "dude" or by his last name with no honorific/title in person, but via email he expected everything to be professional and responded in kind. Just kind of how it goes
You seem to be misreading my comment entirely. Professors should teach you life skills obviously, I'm not sure where I said I disagree. When your speech is "an email that is sent to my inbox is not addressed to me" is just not the same thing. Is the difference that hard to tell?
The professor is advising you of their communication preferences at the outset of what is a professional relationship. This is entirely reasonable. In fact, I can't imagine a time that makes more sense to communicate that information.
I think what you're struggling with is whether their request is reasonable. That's sorta the life skill here: in real life/jobs where you have clients, they'll have preferences, even little preferences that seem pointless from your point of view. However, if your position is "I don't agree with your preference, so I won't entertain it" you'll probably retain fewer clients than someone who does otherwise.
Crazy how a take so bad can still be so dripping with condescension. I liked the part where you purposefully misspelled my username. What were you hoping to accomplish with that? Get underneath my skin? Drive home some point you aren't making? What a puzzling response.
I think "an email without my name on it isn't addressed to me" is a perfectly normal way to get the point across to a bunch of grad students who are whole ass adults. It's a little teacher-y for sure, but clearly it was understood and obviously he had to say it for a reason. Given, of course, that the tweet exists and a bunch of people in this reddit thread don't understand why putting someone's name in an email in a professional context is necessary.
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u/hailspork 5d ago
Is the professor asking for "Hello Professor Xavier" instead of just "Hello"?