Hi Faculty of Science!
The Science Club Website is revamped and is now ok and ready to go! Do go take a look and read up on the latest happenings in Science!
Cheers~
The website is sciclub.nus.edu.sg and please send any suggestions and/or corrections to sciclub.publications@science.nus.edu.sg.
Thanks!
Regards,
Chia Song Zhe Andy (Mr.)
Publications Director
29th Science Club Management Committee
NUS Students' Science Club
A Constituent Club of the NUS Students' Union
This is an email I have just received today actually from our NUS email inbox.
Below is an analysis of the contents based on 7Cs in writing:
1) Courtesy
This Publications Director actually started off with a “Hi” and words like “cheers” actually made this email sound polite. However, it did not refer the readers as “Dear Science students” but greeted us as “faculty of science” instead. This may not come under the “Adopt a You-Attitude” as “faculty of science” did not have endearing tone to it.
2) Correctness
Basically this email has no grammatical mistakes or spelling mistakes. However, phrases such as “Do go take a look” did sound a bit funny. The “go” word is redundant in this case. Words like “ok” also sounded informal. The format of the email is also incorrect. The “cheers” word in the middle of the email did seem out of place as I thought the email was coming to an end.
3) Conciseness
This is a short and concise email. However some phrases may sound repetitive, such as “ok” and “ready-to-go” means the same thing. Another phrase such as “Do go take a look” is not concise enough.
4) Clarity
This letter is straightforward and it is to inform the students of the new website being set up and encourage them to give any feedback.
5) Coherence
Other than the sudden appearance of the word “cheers” in the middle of the email, this email is coherent and straight to the point.
6) Concreteness
He could have included information for example, “A new photo gallery is added” or “More details about an upcoming pageant competition to be found in the website” to attract more students to take a look at the website. Other than that, the phrasing and words he used are effective in conveying his purpose of publicizing the website to students.
7) Completeness
The last sentence “The website is sciclub.nus.edu.sg” has a slight problem to it. At first glance, I thought this is an email address as it did not have a “www” or “http://” in the sentence. He could have written, “The link to the new website is at http://sciclub.nus.edu.sg” and usually, the hyperlink will automatically appear to allow students to have the convenience of clicking to the website. If not, most students will just glance through the email as there is no obvious hint of where the website address is.
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Hi Huiwen,
ReplyDeleteThe email you chose to comment on is supposed to be a formal notification email but is trying to be as informal as it can, making it a little hard to comment on. Nonetheless, your critique is well organised and straight to the point. You also indicated what exactly you are commenting about by quoting phrases from the email directly.
I’m not very sure, but I think that maybe the email was really addressing the whole of Science Faculty and not just the students. So this could be the reason why he did not refer to the readers as “Science students”.
You correctly pointed out the word “Cheers” was out of place. The word is really out of nowhere and totally redundant.
As you have said, the email is rather concise, clear and coherent. It only has a simple message to bring across, so it should be quite easy to keep the email written as such. And as you have also correctly pointed out, the email should have slightly more information to attract people to visit the website. It is really lacking in this.
I supposed the main error of this email is not providing a simple hyperlink for readers to click on to access the website. Good that you also highlighted this problem. If the main purpose of the email is to get people to visit the website, this convenience should be provided for the readers.
Cheers,
Glenn
Hi Hui wen,
ReplyDeleteThis letter does sound very informal. Though the writer tries to adopt the friendly tone throughout the letter, address the science students as the “ faculty” does sound inappropriate. I personally feel that there were afew grammatical errors as the sentences lacked proper phrasing; certain phrased used were too causal. The “ cheers” could have appeared at the end of the letter instead in the middle. However, I agree with you that the letter was indeed very concise in conveying its messeage which was to inform the students of the revamped website. A short write-up of the revamped website could have added to the completeness of the letter. Don’t you think so?
Cheers
Rathi.
Hi Huiwen!
ReplyDeleteyou did up quite a descriptive and interesting analysis of the email!
Anyway, back to the letter, I do agree with Glenn and Rathi that it is a very informal letter.
Even though the email is short and concise, it is also not very informative. It is not organised and there are visible grammatical errors. For example, the sentence "The website is sciclub.nus.edu.sg and please send any suggestions..." doesnt sound grammatically correct and the front portion of the sentence sounds incoherent to the back.
The email is also too short and curt and it makes one feel that it is very insincere.Certain phrases could also be modified to sound more cordial, for example, he could say "if you wish to take a look at..." instead of "do go take a look", which happens to also be grammatically incorrect.
On a separate note, he did sign off appropriately and included the necessary information of where he's from. Unfortunately, it seems to misplaced in the email since it is a little too formal as compared to the rest of the email.
Cheers,
Shu Ting
Hi Huiwen,
ReplyDeleteAltough this is a very short and simple email, you have done a thorough analysis on that. I greatly agree with your critique, but one thing you may take care of is the word limit (about 200 words as required).
I have noticed that, this email does not have a title;or you forgot to copy the title into the post.
This email is short and the language using is quiet informal and casual as you mentioned. I believe the writter did not attach imporantance to this matter. In addition, one purpose of this email is to ask suggestion for a website from students. However, the writter did not use any courteous expression to persuade or encourage students to give feedback. I also strongly support your analysis on Concreteness, as if no attractive information given, no one likely goes to the website after reading the email.
All in all, the writter need to improve his skills on writting emails.
Regard,
Chen Zhi