Thoughts about electronic mail
I end up talking to students about email more than they or I would like.
Here are a few quick notes about ways in which I use (and do not use) email.
Choosing subject lines
I get way too much email, literally hundreds of messages each day. I rely
on programs to automatically file my email and to search my email. I also
scan email to find high-priority. Hence, I’d appreciate it if you’d help me
process email from you more carefully. Here are a few short guidelines.
- Please take the time to choose an appropriate subject line for your
email message.
- If I tell you to use a particular subject line for an email message,
particularly for an assignment, please use that subject line.
The correct subject makes it easier for me to file your email
and, more importantly, for me to find your email.
The typical subject line is “ Assignment: Title
(Your Names)”. For example, in submitting the typical
introductory survey, I might use the subject line “&courseid;
Assignment 1: Introductory Survey (Samuel A. Rebelsky)” or
the subject line “ Assignment 1: Introductory Survey
(Rebelsky)”.
- If you are asking for help on an assignment, please do not use a
title like “Homework assignment”. I generally assume
that titles like that represent submissions
of homework assignments, and may file them without looking at them
until it comes time to grade the assignment. If you’re asking a
question, please put a term like “Question” or
“Help” or even “HELP!” in the subject
line. (Yes, I know that the use of all capital letters is a form
of shouting. It’s okay, and perhaps even preferable, if you virtually
shout when asking for help.)
- If you are replying to a message and are changing the topic of
the message, please also change the subject line. If you want to
be precise, you can include the old subject line in parentheses,
prefixed by the word “Was”, as in “Question on
the assignment (was re: This week’s convocation)”.
Reasonable delays
I do my best to respond to email within twenty-four hours. If I do not
do so, you should feel free to email me a reminder. If you have an urgent
question, please send it via email with “Urgent” in the title. If I
do not respond quickly enough, you can feel free to text me. If you do
text me, please include your name. And don’t text without sending email
first.
Authentication and encryption
Most of us, myself included, don’t think much about email, other
than that it’s a convenient way to communicate. But a few recent
events suggest that we should be a bit more thoughtful. Hence,
I encourage you to consider using mail encryption software,
particularly the GNU Privacy
Guard (GPG) and the more general Pretty Good Privacy (PGP)
protocol.
Since I use GPG, I’ve written a really brief
introduction. There are a host of more useful and more
comprehensive introductions to and tutorials about GPG, so I’m not
going to write much here, other than to recommend that you learn
about using GPG. I will say that, depending on what email package
I’m using and who I’m communicating with, encryption is either trivial
(one click and one password when I’m using Mail.app on the Macintosh
and sending email) or a slight pain (saving the encrypted message as
a file and then running a decryption program when I’m receiving an
encrypted message via Webmail).
GPG is available for all three major operating systems (and probably
for others, too).
- On the Mac, I use GPG Suite.
I find it simple and straightforward. Most of my colleagues use
it too.
- I don’t use Microsoft Windows, but I hear that
gpg4win
works pretty well.
- On the Linux workstations in the MathLAN, GPG is installed as
a command line tool.
If you send me your public key (or a link to your public key) and
ask me to encrypt email to you, I will do my best to remember
(although I may not always succeed). You can find my public key
at https://www.cs.grinnell.edu/~rebelsky/rebelsky.gpg.
or at the MIT key server, https://pgp.mit.edu.