One question that many online students have is quite simple: How do I properly use email to communicate with my professor? While the answers may seem clear on the surface, the reality is that you need to make certain to follow proper etiquette when communicating with your online professors. Otherwise, you may inadvertently offend your professor or you might not get the type of assistance you are looking for.

When writing an email to anyone who is considered to be your superior or who does not actually know you, you should always keep these guidelines in mind:

· Create a meaningful subject line so your online professor will be able to immediately understand the purpose of your email and can prioritize emails
· Open your email with a proper greeting, such as “Dear Dr. Smith”
· Use proper punctuation, standard spelling and proper capitalization
· Never write an email in all uppercase
· Keep the paragraphs short, clear and to the point
· Keep the tone cordial and friendly, but avoid trying to make jokes

Responding to the Online Professor’s Reply

After receiving a response from your online professor, you may need to send a follow-up email. In this case, you should keep the following points in mind:

· Reply within a reasonable amount of time
· Remove the previous messages so your email doesn’t get too large and your email remains crisp and clean looking
· If you are responding to a series of questions, you might want to embed the questions within the online professor’s email

When embedding answers to questions within the email correspondence, you should state at the beginning that this is what you are doing. Then, offset the questions like this:

>When will you be able to complete the project?
I need a one week extension, if at all possible
>Do you anticipate this being an ongoing problem?
No

Keeping Things Private

You should also keep in mind that there are some things that shouldn’t be discussed or shared through email correspondence. Keep in mind that email is not always private and, if it is not encrypted, the information included in the email may be read by someone who is not supposed to see it. As such, you should not send information such as usernames, passwords, credit card information, social security numbers or any other information that might be considered sensitive.

Sending Attachments

If you need to send an attachment with your email, there are a few additional rules of etiquette that you need to keep in mind. These include:

· Never send an attachment the first time you are contacting your online professor. Otherwise, you risk having your email automatically deleted by the computer or by your professor
· Avoid sending files that are extremely large, such as digital photos that have not been resized
· If you must send a large file, contact your online professor beforehand and request permission
· Scan your files with anti-virus software before sending them

By keeping these simple rules of etiquette in mind, you should have no problem communicating with your online professor on a regular basis.