I just received an email to what might be termed an “official communication”. The response I received, while quick and answering my question, bothered me.

There is or, at least, used to be, an etiquette to emails that went along these lines.

1. Initial contact should mimic a written letter, albeit somewhat less formal. An offer indicating preferred address format will be presented in how the email is signed.
2. The response should used the signed form of the address or the more formal - either being correct.

What frustrated me about the email I received was that the response I received was incorrect.

People who know me, know that I prefer to be called “Marc” (I’ll even accept “Mark” with gritted teeth) by my friends, students and colleagues. If, however, someone feels uncomfortable with that form of address and wants to be formal, I can live with that. I do, however get picky on the title. To (mis)quote one of my favorite lines - “I didn’t go to evil graduate school to be called Mr. Tyrrell!”, and that is how the response was addressed despite the fact that my signature line reads “Marc W.D. Tyrrell, Ph.D.” (which, BTW, is also an indicator of preference).

So, two pretty clear indicators of preference and an indicator of what the correct title is (”Dr.” not “Mr.”) and the responder still got it wrong? What message does this convey?

Well, first of all, it could be shear ignorance - maybe they don’t know this coding system, even though it and its predecessors have been in operation for about 1000 years (if you include the responsa literature which is the precursor of modern letter writing). This is quite possible given the abysmal state of language education.

Second, it could be a deliberate insult - a sign that the responder has a “chip on their shoulder” about people with Doctorates. Given that the email was sent to someone in what is apparently a support position at a college, this is quite possible. If that is the case, however, that particular response tells me something about the environment at that institution.

Third, it could be that they simply did not take the time to read or absorb the signature line and, as a result, assumed that the appropriate honourific was “Mr.”. Since the respondent was at one of the major US military colleges, this just makes me more concerned about the organizational environment.

There is one final point I want to make about email etiquette between strangers: if you don’t have the time to carefully establish and/or respond to an email, then answering it should be put off until you do. This is crucial during initial contacts, albeit far less so once a relationship has been established. Some might ask why this is so, and the reason is quite simple: email mimics spoken communication to a much greater degree than written letters do. Since we lack most of the visual and aural cues that situate our spoken communication, we “default” back to written communication styles to establish a relationship.  Without that default positioning, we have too many possible ways to interpret the communication which, especially in “official communications”, can lead to all sorts of mis-interpretations of the situation.
Marc