Make Your Email Subjects Relevant

Posted Apr 1, 2008 | by Jason Faulkner  

One of my pet peeves is receiving emails with complete irrelevant subjects. For example, today I received an email from a customer with the subject line:

URGENT!!!!!!!

That was it.

First of all, I understand your problem is most likely urgent, otherwise you wouldn’t be sending an email about a problem you are having. Instead of sending an email with an utterly useless subject line, something to the effect of “Email Not Responding” or “Cannot Save Data” would have been much more appropriate. By reading one of the subject lines above, I can tell the problem is urgent and get an idea of what the problem is before I read the detail. Additionally, in the event I need to reply to the email, the email doesn’t go out as (unless I remember to change it):

RE: URGENT!!!!!!!

Which is a completely useless email subject on both counts.

Finally, what is the deal with people using 32 exclamation marks in a row?

Which Of These Traits Applies To YOUR Computing Life?...

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