FW: Etiquettes on E-mail Correspondences to JPA London

To All JPA Sponsored students,

We are now in evolving technological space where technology rules almost every aspect of our lives. Most notable and touching of all is the communication sector and, today, I would like to focus specifically on e-mail correspondences.

Daily, JPA London receives between 30 – 80 e-mails, plus dozens of snail mails. E-mails now are increasingly becoming ‘official’, just as mine now to you. However, we have received many e-mails with many shortcomings, with some lacking its status. If you would like us to read and treat your e-mail with its due respect, you must also present it with the proper protocols.

Although very simple, let us remind ourselves again on the above subject.

A. Title – Please put a title to your e-mail that represents the likely subject matter. With the number of e-mails received daily, we will ignore untitled e-mails for worry of virus, worms, etc.

B. Salutation – Please refer us with kinder words and not just “Hi” or Hi there”. Use prefixes such as Mr / En / Tuan / Puan / Cik / Ms / Miss / Sir or Madam. We DO NOT advocate the use of “abang” or “kakak” for its lack of official ness. If you are writing to private e-mails, then the choice is yours but jpalondon@btconnect.com and jpalondon@jpa.gov.my are official e-mail addresses. If you are unsure as to the officer-in-charge, just write “Dear Sir / Madam”. Please also refer us by our name as we normally do as Malaysians. Unless you are now a real true blue British to the tee, there is no Mr. Rahman or Ms. Zamani or Ms. Ariff in this office. We don’t have the practice of surnames in our culture. Don’t be rude.

C. Content – Please write in full and clear sentences. You can use either English or BM in your e-mail to us. What we will not tolerate is abbreviated words in e-mails, as what you’d normally use in SMSes. Examples are “r u” or “ x pe” or “b4” or “y ct n g x plaks nk cum 2 c u @ bs“ or “i 1 2 c u @ p g da”. We don’t understand these and we will not try to assume to understand it also. We will totally ignore, from now, e-mails written in such. So, please make sure you write clearly what you want us to read.

D. Signing-off – It doesn’t hurt a bit to say “Thank you” before you sign off. That’s good mannerism, which we believe you have been taught by your school / parents. Please give them some justice and honor. For those with family names, please also write your name as you normally write them in Malaysia as your records are written in the same. For example, it’s “Yap Ah Loy” not “Ah Loy, Yap ”. Please also write your IC, major and university so that we do not have to cross refer your name every time we receive your e-mail. With your e-mail address with names like “angels”, “death”, “Satan”, “handsome”, “baby”, etc, we need everyone to sign-off with their recognizable name.

PLEASE TAKE NOTE that we will forthwith put on low priority or will totally ignore e-mails that do not conform to the above minimum etiquette.

Thank you.

Kind regards,

Adib Rahman

JPA London