Revising

I took a look at How to e-mail a professor the other night and noticed three sentences that needed revision. Before and after photos:

Before
The cryptic or cutesy or salacious personal e-mail address that might be okay when you send an e-mail to a friend is not appropriate when you’re writing to a professor.

After
A cryptic or cutesy or salacious personal e-mail address is not appropriate when you’re writing to a professor.

(Because in 2023 how many students are likely to be e-mailing their friends?)

Before
All your English professor's classes are English classes; she or he still needs to know which one is yours.

After
All your English professor’s classes are English classes; your professor needs to know which one is yours.

(No need for gender-specific language.)

Before
Many e-mail messages end up never reaching their intended recipients, for reasons of human and technological error, so it's always appropriate to acknowledge that someone's message got through.

After
It’s easy to overlook an e-mail message or have it disappear into a spam folder, so it’s always appropriate to acknowledge that someone’s message got through.

(Less dramatic, more realistic.)

As the sidebar says, How to e-mail a professor is my #1 hit. It continues to get visits daily. One change I haven’t made: even though email is now twice as common as e-mail in print, I still prefer the old-school hyphen.