How to e-mail a professor

Professor Michael Leddy has advice. Some of it might go farther than necessary, but the basics (give a subject, let the person know who you are) seem to be on the useful side, if a tad obvious and by no means specific to communicating with professors. Whether or not you like the advice, it is an interesting sign that new technologies require new forms of etiquette (most people answer the phone in these parts with a "hello," a practice so widespread that it is hard to imagine not doing it -- in the early days of telephony, the standard greeting was "Ahoy!"), and the etiquette does not always develop as quickly as the technology spreads.