Why do many academics write short replies to emails?
For example, I write Professor MK some polite email with salutation, etc., just polite and decent email. MK then responds like this:
OK, MK
Is MK so busy that they have no time to write, for example, this:
Hello,
It is fine. This is the correct approach.
Best regards,
MK
I do not understand this.
Is hello acceptable, or should it be more formal (with or without academic titles)? This is a matter of (sub-)culture. Once you know what to expect, you can effectively communicate. This style is minimalist, but it tells you everything you need to know.
If this bothers you, think of it this way: MK is not only saving their time, but they are also saving your time. By using this style it minimizes the time you have to spent reading their message.
Beyond a certain point in their careers, academics (in particular tenured professors) are essentially a subspecies of managers.
And managers literally receive hundreds of emails per day. Some of these indeed require a more formal response, or a lot of work before you can even compose an answer. If you get 20 emails that each require half an hour of work, 50 more that only require a yes/no answer, and another 100 that are just FYI, you don't spend a lot of time on crafting replies to the yes/no mails... because the first category alone already is more than you can handle in a normal day, given all your other responsibilities.
My experience as a professor is exactly the opposite. I write full emails, and most often students' replies have no heading, nor greeting, nor signature.
TL;DR: I completely understand the need to be efficient, but I think that the optimal (to maximize the average pleasure that can be derived from human interactions) ratio of politeness to efficiency lies way above "OK, MK".
I personally disagree with the view that saving time and being polite/considerate are mutually exclusive or even inversely correlated beyond the most minimal of ratios.
Turning that "OK, MK" reply into "This is the right direction, thanks for the update" takes an extra 2 seconds, not even. While it can be generic in its design, it certainly can still be genuine the same way that even though we say "thank you" a million times a day, it can be meaningful every single time.
Should we stop holding the door for people so as to save a few seconds here and there? To me it's exactly the same argument. People are busy, and yes you do take a few seconds extra to hold the door for someone, but it's a nice gesture and personally I think that small gestures of respect and helpfulness such as those increase the overall quality of life in society.
Actually I strongly believe (no research unfortunately, for those who believe that nothing can be stated just from observation without properly methodologized research), a lot can be said about a society based on the manners of its participants. Just think about how you feel around poorly mannered people and children in particular.
As someone who has a lot of emails to respond to, my approach is the following:
On first contact for a particular conversation thread, I tend to be complete, with "Dear/Hello xxx", and proper conclusion salutations. Further extensions of the conversations then I pick shorter responses, as the "contact" has been established. Sometimes a conversation can extend over a period of days, even in this case, I use the short form as a continuation.
The reason is the following: the cost of writing the email is not the net time required to type in the words. It's context switching. The polite forms of communication are polite exactly for the reason that they invest full attention to the other person. This is ok for a party or a social event, but if you have papers, grants, reviews to handle, lectures to give and 100 emails to respond to, ideally today, attention is a scarce resource. The other side of the politeness coin is respect for the resource constraints of others.
So, when, on the other extreme, I have to write very long, detailed, emails, I prepend them with a 1-2 paragraph summary, so that people can get a (TL;DR) if they do not want to delve into details.
E-mail is its own medium, and in some ways is closer to spoken conversation or text-messaging than to letter writing. Many experienced E-mail users dispense with formalisms and basically just write what they woukd say if you asked the question in person. Salutations and valedictions are considered entirely optional. The informality is in no way a sign of disrespect, it's just a different set of social conventions, and I'm afraid the best advice we can give you is to learn to accept it as such. You aren't required to become less formal in your own E-mails, but I suspect that you will, once you get used to it.
You should not think of the choice as being "OK, MK" versus "Hello, It is fine. This is the correct approach. Best regards, MK".
You should think of the choice as being "OK, MK" versus WAITING THREE DAYS and then receiving "Hello, It is fine. This is the correct approach. Best regards, MK".
From this perspective, your professor has shown you great respect by doing what is necessary for them to respond to your email promptly.
(I can say from personal experience that I switched this semester to signing my e-mails to students simply "TC" instead of "Best, Tom Church". The result is that I respond ~1.5 days faster on average to e-mails from students. I feel this is clearly worth the tradeoff in politeness.)
Functionally, e-mail replaces several different forms of paper communication. The question treats e-mail as a form of letter writing, which is certainly one of the predecessor forms.
I think the very short reply replaces a different form. When we used paper memos, a recipient could indicate agreement by writing "OK" or similar on the memo and initialing it.
They mean different things. "OK" means you have approval to continue as outlined in your email. "Hello, It is fine. This is the correct approach." means that the other person has specific positive knowledge that (a) there is a known correct approach and (b) what you've described in your email is that.
It would be wrong for someone, in an attempt to add extra words to their email for the sake of polite encouragement, to say something that isn't what they really mean.
At risk of perpetrating a stereotype, academics are more likely than average to be the kind of people, and operate in the kind of environment, where accuracy of expression is valued over diplomatic platitudes and polite but unwarranted praise. Whatever their subject, they're familiar with the notion of precision. But it's not just academics: you'll often find enclaves in professional environments where people customarily do the same thing in email. You'll also find groups who don't communicate this way in email, rather they always write complete sentences. You'll find people who do different things for different audiences. Maybe this academic is one of them, but since they've offended you they have perhaps misjudged what kind of audience you are. But equally you seem to expect everyone to write complete sentences all the time, and that's just not how everyone uses email.
That's not to say academics are always rude, or that it's necessary to be inaccurate in order to be polite: one can always be accurate and also take time to be considerate. But if you consider it impolite or indecent for a reasonably busy person to give a curt but accurate reply, then you're swimming against the tide and you will probably need to consider again :-)
A lot of people prefer small mails with meaning rather than large mails that tells nothing. Some benefits:
Small replies is a habit not only for the academic staff but also for the business people.
Of course there is some truth in all these answers... Equally, in my opinion, there is the subtext of the relationship between the correspondents, whether it is stable (if not "peer"), or whether it is yet-to-be-established, possibly peer, possibly not.
The slightly-red herring of "efficiency" is interesting, but I think fundamentally an excuse for taking slightly less care than one might, whether with up-status or down-status correspondents. Yes, if one email is among many in a flurry of back-and-forth between familiars, that's wildly different from isolated emails between strangers who have yet to establish a relationship.
The probably more statistically-relevant question could be about students emailing their instructors, and the replies. If the goal is to show respect, then use of an honorific, and investment of an extra 10 seconds to format the email, is an investment with a great return.
About more-senior students and faculty supervisors: same criterion... namely, if your goal should happen to be conveying a token of respect (as opposed to conveying familiarity), a few seconds' effort will be well repaid. (If a particular person really wants to be first-named, give them the chance to tell you that, rather than presuming, or even asking... the principle is always the same.)
If the person you're addressing is older than your parents, maybe as old or older than your grandparents, ... if nothing else you should imagine that they have had a different cultural experience. Not necessarily better or worse, but different. In particular, some decades ago, in the U.S., in my experience, youngish people would never address older people by first names, except in highly ritualized ways/settings. Some older people in fact chose "radical seeming-familiarity" in their interactions with younger people. This slightly confused me at the time, although, on one hand, it seemed sooo egalitarian. On another, as I thought about later, it is only the really, really powerful people who can afford to pretend to not be what they obviously are. Hm.
(FWIW, my 20-something daughter makes a caricature of first-naming me both in person and in email (and in text), but fairly tongue-in-cheek.)
Bottom line: take into account your recipient. They may have expectations (duh!)... which may or may not include courting "familiarity" in language. They may or may not feel that their own status allows them to be curt with you, should they feel the need... sigh...
Another summary: if the primary information in the emails is pseudo-objective, probably people will be less interested in the social information. On the other hand, if there are significant social issues being negotiated by voice, language, tone, form-of-address, etc., then ... well, gosh, yes, voice, language, tone, form-of-address will matter.
Edit: the form of responses to your emails certainly does convey something about the attitude of the responder... however, it depends (apparently!) enormously on the preferences of that person. There are at least four different cases... (1) brusque, brief, and in fact is not interested in you (2) brusque, brief, but may or may not care about you (3) polite, but does not really care about you (4) polite, and may possibly care about further interaction, but it's unclear from this preliminary communication. You cannot begin to understand the nuances of response to a "cold-call" email without knowing the person and their preferences.
TL;DR, context.
It depends a lot on the culture. I think professors (for example) implicitly have the right to short or curt emails regardless. In the United states, I think if you are polite to your teachers (avoid the word professor) , you don't have to worry too much about writing long elaborate emails. For example you can call them by their first name rather than using a title.
Hi John, I was curious if x. Thanks, and then just use your first name in the signature.
Think of emails in the Unites States as "business casual" - well dressed but not ornate.
In the age of written letters, email once was meant for short messages, and used by very few people. When I was younger, it was not (always) considered offensive to write something in the "Subject field" only ("back in my office in 5min"). Mail was meant to inform, shortly.
A friend of mine had a PhD advsisor (before 2000) who, when my friend had sent a "too long" mail, answered in 6 letters: "PLSSPK", meaning "please speak": come to my office, explain in spoken language. Mail is not efficient for everything (try humor, 2nd degree without emoticons).
Now, nobody writes letters anymore, mail is widespread, and some use it for control, to keep track. Some use it to avoid direct contact. Good reasons. The problem is people using mail do not have the same standard.
From "PLSSPK" in the subject, to "Good morning, or good evening if you read my mail at your own timezone" followed by tens of lines, there are worlds. It is about habits, responsiveness, context switching, all good reasons.
Nowadays, I have surendered to long emails because most of my colleagues expect me to do that. They would feel offended if I don't. But on occasion, face to face, I suggest we both could write shorter emails, and ask if the other would feel offended. Very often, not.
It's like shaking hands: some don't like to do that, feel obliged to (and it is not healthy, smile). If you ask her/him how they'd like to be salutated, they'd say: "just say hello, or nod". It is a manner of personal trend, and social conventions.
My suggestion: if you cannot see or talk to the person, accept that he/she has answered you, not the way you would have, but in her/his way. And stick to your own way of answering. If you can talk to the person, ask (politely) about these habits, find a common ground. Say something like "You answer quite shortly. I am not used to that (express you feelings, important). Where did this habit come from. Do you mind if I still write long emails, or would you prefer shorter ones?".
People act differently, this does not mean they are SO different.
Lots of good points in the replies, but I think we're collectively overthinking this.
Email culture varies as to length and formality. It varies by country, language, sector (including academia vs industry vs business), and by subgroup/industry. It's pointless to overthink it.
It sounds like Prof. MK feels their 2-word reply says all that needs to be said. It probably did not occur to them that anyone, e.g. you, would feel differently.
As a 2nd order point, Prof. MK probably feels secure enough in their position to not think too much how their email is coming across, while more junior people may anxiously reread and rewrite their emails multiple times to get the tone "just right". It's even possible that Prof. MK might find what you call "polite and decent" emails overlong and fluffy, and might even be trying to telegraph that to you. Impossible to tell.
Don't take it personally. Be happy they're in agreement with your approach. And perhaps take it as a gentle nudge to be briefer in your own emails with them. We're all always adjusting our tone based on what we observe around us.
I spend my time weaving across the line between academia and industry/business. Especially on the business side, "OK, [initials]" is fully acceptable and neutrally polite. As is your alternative, though in that subculture it would be worth a bit of an amused smirk.
Those short emails will happen more frequently if you are in a good relationship with him.
"OK" is good signal. If he find mistakes in your writing, he will point them out in his long email. You don't want such a long email from him, do you?
Short email also happen more in natural science comparing to social science. It happens more in large group than small group. If you are his only advisee, he might spend more time on you. But if he has 30 advisees in all undergrad, master, phd, pos-doc levels and 200 students in the class he is teaching, short email should be appreciated.
Short email will also shorten the "turn-around" time. If you want him to send long email to everyone, you might need to wait for days for that reply. But if you are fine with concise and clear email, then you only need to wait for a few hours.
Also, a lot people is use the email as a real-time chatting platform. In such platform you don't say "hello" and sign your name each time. You just write the same way as you talk.
I like short emails as long as they are clear and rigorous.
