Harper Technical Writing
E-Mail
E-mail Courtesies] | E-mail File Attachments--Very Important!
E-mail will be an important technology for this class. We will use it to communicate with each other about assignments, difficulties, and just general remarks; and to submit rough and revised drafts of projects, and editing exercises quizzes. So, it is very important that you know both your own e-mail address and the e-mail addresses of your instructor. I will send you a list of your classmates' e-mail addresses. (You could also create an e-mail "nickname" for the class if you know how to do so in your e-mail application. Putting that nickname in the "To:" section of the e-mail header would send your message to every e-mail address listed in the nickname.) Also, it is very important that you are able to send and receive e-mail file attachments (see below).

You have probably memorized your own e-mail address; it would be helpful to memorize my (your instructor's) address as well. Also, you should check your e-mail every day or two, especially when you've e-mailed a question to your instructor or when assignments are due.

E-mail Courtesies
When you send an e-mail message to your classmates or to me, please include the following:

  • In the Subject line at the top of the message, put "E103" and a short, 3-5-word summary of the message: for instance, "E103: Orientation Quiz," or "E103: Project 1 Rough Draft," and so on.
  • Begin your message with a salutation addressed to the reader: for instance, "Dear Kurt Neumann," "Hi, Classmate," or similar.
  • Be sure to include your name at the end of the message.

E-mail Attachments--Very Important!
The rough and revised drafts of any project must be submitted as an attachment to an e-mail message. Drafts should not be submitted in the body of the e-mail message. This is because the formatting of technical documents is fundamental to their purpose, yet many e-mail applications strip the formatting, such as headings and spacing of lines, from messages they transmit.

Sending and receiving attached files is often difficult with proprietary Internet services, especially AOL. So, if AOL is your Internet Service Provider (ISP), then you must make sure that you can send and receive e-mail file attachments. A revised draft that is not formatted according to the course guidelines will not be evaluated as highly as if its formatting were in place.

Also, when you attach a file, make sure that the file is in Rich Text Format (*.rtf). This, too, will help preserve the formatting across e-mail applications.

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