In the days before e-mail, if your classmate had a question on punctuation, you were unlikely to hear about it. But now, you, your professor, and your entire department could easily be the recipients of an extended e-mail thread on the matter.

Almost every student at the University is part of at least one e-mail listserv. Listservs are usually used to send event notices and distribute general information to its members — but this isn’t the only use students have found for them.

One of the most recent examples involved the School of Information listserv on N ov. 19. The original sender asked if there should be one or two spaces after a period, and went on to inquire if paragraph indentations have become “old-school thinking.”

In the six replies, a few students, a professor and an administrator attempted to answer the questions while conveying personal accounts of their experiences with the period-spacing rule.

“I too had heard that the standard had changed, but it feels weird to me,” one student wrote. “I haven’t come up against any problems for using 2 so I can’t see it being worth the trouble to slow down my typing by remembering to only hit the space bar once.”

John King, the vice provost of Academic Information, said the reason the two-space rule — a holdover from the typewriter era that became unnecessary with more sophisticated spacing in modern word processors — remained the norm until recently was because “nobody asked, nobody told.”

He went on to explain that this began to change at the same time the “convention against split infinitives started to erode,” throwing in Star Trek references to make his point.

“Recall that the original Star Trek in the ‘60s “boldly went” to the split infinitive, and generations of grammar teachers were phasered in the process (phasers not set on “stun” either),” he wrote. “It’s now common wisdom that the ‘60s “changed everything.”

Suzanne Shuon, assistant director of the doctoral program, then chimed in, reminiscing about her typing experiences in high school in the ‘60s.

“Those were the days,” she wrote. “(No white out, manual typewriters only, cute little wheel shaped erasers with a little brush attached!)”

The thread of e-mails concluded with a reply from a student of just one sentence.

“Idi dnot take tipyng in high sckool and I turn ed out fien,” the e-mail said.

Not all extracurricular use of e-mail groups is focused on trivial matters. On Oct. 29, Brittany Galisdorfer, a master’s student in Public Policy, sent out an e-mail to the Public Policy listserv.

“The Mayo Clinic recently denied my aunt’s request for an appointment,” she wrote. “For the past two years my aunt has seen countless doctors for numbness in her feet and hands and special disorientation. She also had an MRI that showed severe brain degeneration for her age, 44. My aunt can still walk and climb stairs with assistance but fears she will be in a wheelchair soon. Other than these specific and severe problems, my aunt is perfectly healthy. If anyone has any connections at Mayo that might help her get an appointment, my family and I would really appreciate it if you could send them my way. Thank you!”

The e-mail concluded with her contact information.

Galisdorfer said she received about 20 positive responses that helped her understand the process at the clinic and gave her ideas on how to get her aunt around the process.

“As a student in the Public Policy school, I realized that my classmates and professors are generally well-connected people and have direct work experiences that could help me out,” she said.

Galisdorfer said this was the first personal e-mail of this sort that she sent to a listserv, though she has used them in the past for event notices and to clarify questions in classes.

“Usually I think (listservs are) a better way of asking questions because there’s always someone else that shares your concern,” she said.

She added that she has only had positive experience with listservs, even when she receives irrelevant e-mails because students accidentally click “reply all.”

“It doesn’t bother me too much,” Galisdorfer said. “It’s just so easy to just click delete. You kind of feel more embarrassed for the person than it really bothers you, since usually they didn’t realize they were responding to all.”

However, some “reply all” situations can get undeniably out of hand. For example, a request to fill out a seminar group research project survey was sent to two listservs. The e-mail said the survey would take just 30 seconds to fill out. The first e-mail was sent on April 8 at 4:25 p.m. By 7:33 p.m. of the same day, the thread had 79 replies, many within seconds of each other.

Over just a three-hour span, a flood of people responded to the e-mail with comments like, “Take me off the mailing list” or “Don’t click reply all.” Some pointed out how “obnoxious” the replies were or questioned whether the thread was a joke.