Commerce textbook states ’emails should be as short as skirts’

New Delhi: A B.Com (Honours) textbook tells students the outlines of writing an email, where it states that emails should be short enough to be interesting like skirts. The book ‘Basic Business Communication’ has been written by C.B. Gupta, former head of the commerce department of a Delhi University-affiliated college.

The textbook is widely prescribed to the B.Com (Honours) students by professors in most of the DU-affiliated colleges, DC reports.

The book is in circulation since over a decade, reads: “Email messages should be like skirts–short enough to be interesting and long enough to cover all the vital points.”

A student, who did not want her name to be revealed, said, “Some students from socially and economically weaker sections have a tendency to memorise everything written in the textbooks, without realising that such analogies may legitimise casual sexism in our society. Why didn’t anyone question this statement in this book which is being reprinted for years?” she asked.

The 70-year-old professor C.B. Gupta showed regret and told that this particular analogy was picked from the book written by a foreign author.

“I have already deleted the statement from my book. I will also advise the publisher to remove the content before publishing,” he said.