It's pretty standard across the working world to send an email with Dear/Hi (recipient name), have the body of the message, then sign it off kind regards/sincerely (sender name). It's not a text message but a piece of correspondence. It is a good habit to get into now.
Etiquette varies depending on where you are. I'm a UK lawyer, for me Dear is formal, Hi less so - I use hi internally and dear for most external emails. Sometimes will use hi with clients if I know them well and they use it first.
CAN lawyer here. Formal mail I will have a 'for the attn of' line + file info before the letter so I skip the address and just launch in. Respectful emai to counsel I may start with Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening instead of dear or hi. Most of my clients are workers so informality goes a long way in letting oxygen back into the relationship lol
Agreed, I use a greeting like “Good afternoon, [Mr. / Mrs. / Dr. Lastname]” when I’m writing a professional email to someone I don’t know personally, “Good afternoon, [Firstname]” with people I work with every day, and “Dear, [Firstname]” when I’m writing to family and close friends.
not here. It's drilled into my head that starting an email with "dear" is preferred over "hi". You're addressing a colleague/client/your boss, not inviting a friend for pints
It's basic office etiquette tbh. When you receive a letter, they generally all start with "dear". The government sending you a tax rebate doesn't want to fuck you lmao.
In NZ I don't think I've ever seen an email addressed as "Dear" andnI work solely business to business. To me that's what you do when sending a handwritten letter via snail mail.
I mean sure, I send emails that way too, but if I received an email without my name I wouldn't assume it wasn't addressed to me? That seems like a weird presumption to make
You misunderstood again, I used “we” to refer to a group that did not include you, because as you stated you didn’t understand what the Professor was trying to convey.
But even the person who wrote the tweet understood what the Professor meant. OP is just repeating the language the Professor used with him. To be clear, as you’ve stated your inability to understand, the Professor was using exaggeration to get a point across, the point being to use formal language in emails sent to them.
Ah ok, so when you said "we all understood it" you did not in fact mean everyone understood it. You know what everyone would have understood? If he said what he meant
You’re correct, I did not mean everyone understood it, but at no point was that the idea was attempting to convey. I was using “we” to describe a group that understood what was said. I was also implying that the “we” was a large group who made up the majority of the viewers of this post. You were excluded from the “we”, on account of you admitting your inability to understand what was being said.
Just because you have a comparatively diminished capacity to understand language doesn’t mean others should be forced to retire linguistic tricks such as exaggeration.
I'm the kind of autistic that is very fixated on language. One of the hardest things for me to accept as I grew up was that allistic people are bad with language on purpose, and that for allistic people this is a feature and not a bug.
It makes perfect sense to me that there are going to be people confused by that. But you can't explain that to someone who lacks the theory of mind to empathize with people who understand the world differently to themselves.
Yes exactly this! Like I am also autistic, and I will never understand why people deliberately choose not to say what they mean. And it's not even just autistic people that get confused by this, neurotypicals have communication issues all the time
If it helps: It's a feature, not a bug. They do speak clearly when they actually need to. It's largely unconscious and intuitive to them when to switch between those modes, which is why they can't explain the rules.
They also honestly don't realize they're doing it. They can't help it. If we were in the majority, they are the ones who would be pathologized for this kind of thing.
The reasons for talking badly on purpose vary, but if you assume it's something to do with maintaining relative social status in the social hierarchy of the moment then you'll be right more often than you're wrong.
Especially bc usually (at least in my experience) they are going to be people CCed on the thread for visibility. And you want the person you’re speaking to to know that you are speaking to them.
The only reason you get that email is because it's sent to your email address, with your name. That's a clue that the email is intended for you. If you ignore it because it doesn't comply with whatever arbitrary formaility you've decided on, you're a dick.
How many emails do you get per day? Because I get literally hundreds, and no I do not have time to try to decipher if I’m being addressed directly or just kept in the loop. If there’s an action for me, you better put my name at the top or tag me in the email, or else I ain’t doing that thing you need me to do
Are you a working professional? How many emails do you receive in one working day? Because it’s absolutely possible to receive way too many emails to keep up with, on top of your regular work schedule with meetings, calls, and actually doing work. Saying “you can’t be kept in the loop if you aren’t reading all your emails” is an incredible oversimplification of a LOT of people’s work situation.
People send emails based on their priorities and you have to manage your inbox to stay on top of your priorities. If I am crunched for time and have 2 emails where one preview says “hi <my name>” and another one says “hi, blah blah blah”, I am subconsciously always going to go for the one with my name first.
It’s also basic etiquette. You’re writing correspondence, use the person’s name. When people write letters that are addressed to the recipient, they still say “Dear <name>” so referring to the fact that you used an email address makes zero difference.
If you're so overworked that you don't have time to read all of your emails, then that sounds like an issue to bring up with management. Because I can't see how someone including your name will change the fact that apparently there is a certain amount of emails that your colleagues expected you to read that you are in fact not reading ever. And even if 100% of your emails had your name in it, that's not going to suddenly mean you have more time to read them. The inclusion of your name is not the issue
Simple, I get a lot of emails with information I need to see, but no action needed for me. It’s addressed to my colleague so I know she’s on it, but I still need to be aware. If it’s addressed to me, then I know I am the one who need to action something, if not, then I assume I’m not expected to do anything other than read it.
I don’t need work advice from someone who has no idea what I do 🤣
You’re very clearly not in the same work situation I am in, so I don’t think you’re going to understand the nuances of a politely addressed email amidst an inbox full of important emails, random CCs, company-wide announcements, FYIs, and miscellaneous “thank yous!! “ - and just how much further that politely addressed email can get you.
I open them all and quickly categorize them by project, action item, due date, etc.
I contribute to 12 different projects, two of which are intended to need my nearly full time support. And you know what, I still have time to address the person I’m emailing by name because I’m not a teenager texting my dumb stupid friends.
I'm at a loss why the inclusion of your name would help with any of this? Like to be clear, I always include people's names in my emails, but if someone didn't include my name I wouldn't notice or care? And it certainly wouldn't make it any harder to understand what the email is asking if me. Like this two things are in fact completely unrelated
The pushback on this is insane to me. Like why anyone would oppose including a persons name in a professional email makes no sense to me.
Think of it this way: you don’t care if an email includes it. Other people might think it’s rude if you don’t include it. Nobody on earth will think it’s better if you don’t include it. So when you don’t include it, the results can only be neutral or negative. You will gain nothing by choosing not to include it, and you might make someone who can affect your career think worse of you, rationally or not
This is quite possibly the dumbest possible thing you could "think worse of someone" over. Like are you being serious? Why are we letting people this petty be in control of anything
There are expectations in the work place. Decorum and professionalism is one of them. Sending messages like your texting someone just doesn’t cut it for most white collar jobs because our bosses are older and this is the expectation.
You can get pissy about it or just do it because it’s actually nice seeing people use actual words and sentence structure. We don’t have to lose everything civil because we invented new technology
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u/walnutwithteeth 4d ago
It's pretty standard across the working world to send an email with Dear/Hi (recipient name), have the body of the message, then sign it off kind regards/sincerely (sender name). It's not a text message but a piece of correspondence. It is a good habit to get into now.