Delhi University students taught to keep emails short, like skirts

As part of their course material, students of Delhi University (DU) studying for a graduate degree in Commerce (Honours) have a book recommended by the university — Basic Business Communication — in the final semester of their three-year course.

Among the communication skills that the students can hope to pick up while studying the book, published by S Chand and Company, is a chapter on 'Email Etiquettes', which tries to list out the basic principles that should be kept in mind while writing an email.

Under the subheading 'Keep your mail brief', the author, Prof CB Gupta, former head of SRCC's Commerce Department, has recommended the following etiquette: "Email messages should be like skirts — short enough to be interesting and long enough to cover all the vital points. If the email message is long, it might not be read at all or read too casually."

While the offending lines have been in the book since 2005, it is only now that a third-year Kamala Nehru College student took exception to them. The latest edition of the book published in 2016 carries this paragraph.

"It's a glaring example of how a university can legitimise casual sexism via a prescribed textbook. I fail to understand why such an esteemed author would even think of writing or approving such a sentence in his book," a student, who took to social media to question the continuation of the lines in the book, told DNA.

When contacted, Prof Gupta said the faux-pas wasn't intentional and he would remove the "controversial" content from the next edition. He also apologised to readers.

Long & short of it

The author of the book said he was inspired after reading a similar analogy in an international publication.
He wrote emails should be like skirts — short enough to keep it interesting, long enough to cover vital points.