Press Send and Prosper: E-mailing Profs

Cyberspace: the final frontier. These are the enterprises of the modern student. Her undergraduate mission: to explore strange new syllabi, to seek out help and resources, to boldly go where many students have gone before… …Her professor’s UTmail+ inbox. Okay okay, maybe e-mailing a professor isn’t quite as exciting or high stakes as hiking through Andoria, but it can feel like a monolithic task. I have heard all sorts of horror stories—everything from sending a prof the wrong e-mail to accidentally using a text abbreviation! Shudder.
Pictured: Spock from Star Trek staring at a computer
Spock is unimpressed by "lol jk" Picture courtesy of http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/
After three years of interacting with professors through various mediums, I think I am starting to get the hang of it.
Here is what I always keep in mind when I’m drafting an e-mail: