Why did I receive a negative response from a professor when emailing about course content and prerequisites of a course I am considering taking? I wrote the following email to a professor (I've removed any personal or specific details):

Dear Prof. Last name,
Hope this email finds you well.
I am Name, an undergraduate in the mathematics department.
I write to enquire about Course code - Course name being offered in fall semester. What can I expect from the course content and what are the prerequisites? Would it be along the lines of Name of a Book?
One sentence describing previous courses I've taken
Looking forward to hearing from you soon. Thanks for your time!
Best,
Name
Department
Institution

The subject line was:

About Course Name next Fall Semester

I thought this email is perfectly fine, and it's how I generally write to professors. To my shock and surprise, I got the following response:

I am sure very soon you will be writing many more official emails, so you must know how to address them appropriately. You may see course content on the department webpage.Initials

Could someone help me figure out (i) how to respond to this, and (ii) what went wrong so I can avoid it in future emails (to any professor in general)? Thus far, no professor has pointed out so explicitly that something is wrong with the language of my email - so I'm in a state of great confusion right now.

Additional details:

I haven't interacted with this professor before, so this was my first email to them.
It seems I was at fault for not checking the course content on the department webpage before writing this email. However, that page has not been updated in years and I just wanted to make sure the content is still the same. Lastly, I think this wouldn't have made them feel that I addressed them inappropriately - since that has more to do with email etiquette than the content of the email.


Follow-up question:
I'm thinking of apologizing and explicitly asking how I can improve my email's language: &quot;Thank you for your reply, and sorry for the seemingly inappropriate language of my email. I would be grateful if you could kindly pinpoint what part of the email was inappropriately written, so I can be more careful in all future communication.&quot;
Would this be a good idea? I read somewhere on this very site that it's never impolite to ask how to be polite.
There is nothing inappropriate (that anyone can see here) in the way that you've written your email. The response from the professor suggests that they're some combination of (a) incredibly time-constrained, (b) sloppy and unclear in how they communicate, and (c) a jerk.

It's possible (as user2768 suggests) that the essential &quot;offense&quot; in their eyes was to ask about things available in the online site. If so, then their first sentence was a sloppy and mostly mindless piece of aggression that doesn't really mean what it says.

The curtness, snarkiness, and level of aggression communicates that they don't like interacting with students by email, do not want to spend time on it, and want such querents to go away and not bother them.

Given the above, writing them again and asking for more time to be spent on even smaller minutiae -- like revisiting what they meant in a hastily-written throwaway email, and to spend even more time parsing the grammar of the original student email that they've already expressed contempt for handling -- is only likely to make things worse.


I suggest that you accept this line of inquiry as not useful and likely to produce only further confusion and frustration on both sides. Do not email them again on this matter. If you must email them again in the future, on some different matter, make it as brief as you possibly can (shorter than your original email), and try to pose a question that can be given a very short, clear-cut answer.
I'll say that the only thing the professor really got right there was in accurately predicting your next instinct would be that, &quot;very soon you will be writing many more official emails&quot;, and to be aggravated-in-advance by that prognostication. Resist the temptation to fully prove them right!
Also, consider asking around if this professor is good to interact with (maybe people you know or a ratings website). If their course is not required, then you may be getting a signal that they're just not a good professor.