I emailed Professor X regarding typos in, and questions on, his book. I've never met and contacted him. My email commenced with this salutation:
Dear Prof. X
He replied
It is customary to address professors by their title in full, just as most people would not abbreviate the full names ...
Wow, Prof Mill is full of him/herself. I could care less about whether someone spelled my title or name incorrectly. Hell, they can write Dear Santa Claus in place of my real name and I would hardly blink.
Are you sure he's upset because of "Prof." and not because of leaving out other titles (e.g. Dr.)? In some countries, the PhD is considered to be more important.
@JeffE: My first reaction was similar, but after thinking about it a bit more, in all honesty, if I emailed a professor I had absolutely no connection to at all (like not even in the same department or school), I would feel it slightly inappropriate to shorten Professor to Prof... it seems to suggest you couldn't even be bothered to type the whole darn thing out, when many people already do. Now his response is perhaps 100x more gauche than this, and it'd tick me off if I read it too, but I feel like the underlying sentiment isn't outright preposterous...
@HRSE: do you mean writing them in full in, say, an address (Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. X, Dept. of Biology, ...) or in the introduction of an email (Dear Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. X, or rather Dear Professor Doktor der Ingenieurwissenschaften...)?
Where did this occur, please. It is country specific. I doubt that it is a question of Prof. v Professor. And are you a newcomer to this place? If you come from an informal country to, say, Austria, you might just not understand what is expected. A friend of mine once moved to Switzerland and was chastised/shunned by his neighbors because he didn't have "enough" flowers on his balcony.
That just reminds me of the people whose professional emails end with 25 different acronyms. Usually these people seem more intent on flashing their credentials than actually using the knowledge they gained from having said credentials. Usually humility doesn't come to these people easy, and they end up being a bit pushy when it comes to their ego (a bit like here)...
@HRSE: In Germany and Austria, it can be a "sin" to leave out a title, i.e. addressing someone (in writing) as "Prof. Dr. Dr. Dr.h.c. Bla" is fine and often even required, but they would think you lost your mind if you wrote Professor Doktor Doktor etc. in full.
Professor is not a title but a job description... - The "title" is "Dr." in its various incarnations, from the basic PhD to the Doctor of Science which is much rarer. So as others have said, the response seems weird at best.
@AlexandreAubrey I'm curious about it. Just because some people have square heads and turn everything into an issue, I don't have to fear asking whatever I consider fit to satisfy my curiosity.
@Christian Which countries? Not in the UK, in Germany or in France. - It is just a jobn description in the same way of say "Director". And a "PhD" is also NOT a title, it is a degree. If you want a title, that is the "Dr." in front of your name which you can use if you hold a Doctorate (in its various incarnations, which includes the PhD).
@DetlevCM I'm American and two minutes ago would have told you "Professor" is a title just like "Doctor" or "Mister." Here you can't use both together, so my linguistics background would tell me they're in the same class.
@GeoffreyBrent it is not off topic in terms of my opinion. i wasn't writing anything new. now you bringing this comment out to me, that is off topic.
@ChrisHayes it is a detail that needs clarification to some. maybe not to you, that is perfectly fine. but comments are not for starting an argument as you are doing.
Are you absolutely sure that you didn't confuse his first and last names (some people have names that look like two first names) when you emailed him? That would explain his response...
@OzgurBagci At this point the conversation chain has gone on long enough that taking/moving that set of comments to chat would be the appropriate course of action, I feel.
@allo "Prof." alone does already imply "Dr.", so it is consequent enough - but not very formal. That would need "Prof. Dr. Alfred Alf". Formal like in letterhead or the name in a paper.
I experienced this as well with one of my profs. He replied with something along the line of "Don't abbreviate professor into prof. Do you want me to address you as stud?" [in case you don't get it, "stud" is the first four letters of "student"]
@VolkerSiegel Depending on your location, it is indeed possible to be a professor without a doctorate in some countries, such as the UK, for example because the university hopes for better industry ties. The "Professors" in these cases are often also more managers than actual "Professors". - In France, "Professeur" ist just the job title for any teacher and can be used for anybody who teaches, irrespective of degree. So you are nearly always right - but not quite always.
@AlexandreAubrey While I agree that this is not a gender issue, there is an interesting parallel to draw with the custom of specifying "preferred pronouns", which is another hot topic; for instance, one of the answers states that everyone has the right to request being referred to however they like.
@VolkerSiegel And "prof." implies "professor", but he is still insisting on the full word. My point was about how silly it is to insist on such formalities and when you need to insist on the full word for formal titles to feel good, then you should of course not drop redundant titles. The more titles, the better.
Some professors are too much pedantic others are just prof.
@DetlevCM In france there are job titles like "professeur des écoles" and "professeur des universités". The only one that can be used to qualify formally someone is "professeur des universités" as "prof." (or rarely "professeur"), for others it is never used. You can only speak about someone at the third person as being a "prof" like "that guy is our professor" (rarely "he is a teacher"), but this is informal and never used directly to the person. So Prof. X is only for Full Professor in universities - In France -.
Discussion on question by Antinatalis…
Discussion on question by Antinatalis…