communication and standard mail. They alleviate difficulties with waiting periods and allow their users to get the best deals for their respective interests. Texts ensure that delays can be anticipated and frustration avoided as meetings and appointments can be rescheduled in real time if traffic delays or other causes would otherwise make someone late or cause them to miss an appointment. Unfortunately, however, texts and emails which are not managed correctly may create more problems than they solve.

In some cases, it becomes obvious that a writer has hastily put together an unsuitable answer, skirting real issues or as a delaying tactic, and then ignores the real problem. The recipient must then decide whether this requires action or patience and a stalemate can result from procrastination or sheer laziness. The recipient is often discouraged.

It is easy to make excuses and claim non-receipt of emails and texts, regardless of delivery notices and “proof." Deniability is common. Similarly, a sender acting in haste may claim to have sent a text or email when they actually have not. Technology can be blamed and therefore no real accountability exists.  In business, it also adds to the problem when certain matters raised in an email, for example, need to be actioned by different departments and a sender, rather than handling matters and ensuring follow up, thinks that it is sufficient to ignore most of the content, providing a poor and incomplete response, frustrating the recipient. 

Emails and texts may be sent to the wrong person or company creating embarrassing situations. In reality, relationships, both personal and professional, have been ruined irreparably when emails or texts have found their way to the wrong person. This also covers the privacy issue and the potential for a lack of respect for confidentiality and discretion.  

Language needs to be appropriate and using abbreviations, when sufficient consideration has not been given to the audience, causes untold issues, misunderstandings and incorrect actions to be taken.  The tone may be too informal and even dissuade potential customers from continuing their associations due to a lack of professionalism. In personal texts and emails, the language may be too colloquial for someone, perhaps an older reader, to understand.

There is also the issue of emails and texts containing too much information causing, especially with texts, the recipient to misread or completely overlook crucial facts in an ill-considered text, concentrating on the first piece of information only or forgetting to deal with everything, whereby the recipient must follow up again in order to resolve problems.

The brief nature of texts and, to a lesser extent, emails means that the sender may not be able to effectively communicate his intention appropriately. Rather than establish real contact, he sends a poor email or text simply in order to be able to say that a matter has been handled. The lack of any real contact in emails and texts, especially poorly written ones, means that, without facial expressions, body language and so on, the real message is not communicated.

Some students do send poorly written emails to professors. This can cause problems for both the students and the professors.

One type of common problem is when students violate stated policies of using only university accounts to send emails to professors. Often, such emails go to spam folders and never get received. Also, any email from an unknown address with an attachment could be deleted unread, because opening emails with attachments from unknown senders can infect a computer with a virus.

The next type of badly written email is one that does not identify a student fully, with a full name (as the name appears on the roster) and course. Since most professors teach multiple classes, an email signed with just a first name or a nickname means that the professor must write back asking the student for a full name and which course they are enrolled in, a step that wastes time.

Another type of poor email communication is when students ask questions that are covered in the syllabus. In that case, a professor may simply email back a copy of the syllabus and recommend that the student read it. Again, this is a waste of time that could be avoided if the student had read the syllabus.

Any sort of unclear or ambiguous writing, or messages that are missing essential information, wastes time, as it requires writing back to ask for clarification.

Finally, badly written emails create an impression that the student is not well prepared for university-level work or is sloppy about electronic communication. A professor might not feel comfortable writing reference letters for a student who has such issues.