A Checklist for Every E-mail You Send

Number 35 is, to me, the most critical. I get enough email that it's just impossible to deal with messages with useless subjects. And *blank* subject lines are just directed straight to the spam folder.

Even for casual, personal correspondence, the subject line is important.

Make the subject line reflect what the message is about. If you're sending a note describing your recent trip to Napa Valley, use something like "The Napa trip", not "Hi", nor "I'm back!" And it's *never* useful to use a subject like "From Bill". Avoid "Tuesday" for a message sent on Tuesday; "Tuesday" is a perfectly good subject for a message sent on Sunday *about* Tuesday (though "Plans for Tuesday" might be better). For business correspondence, this is especially important. Don't use "a question", but prefer "a question about Firefox on a Mac". Be specific without making the subject too long.

When you're replying to a message, don't gratuitously change the subject, since the recipient will probably be using the subject line to keep the messages together (threading). By the same token, *do* change the subject on a reply when the discussion really *has* shifted to another topic. "Re: Notes on Tuesday's meeting" isn't a useful subject when you've moved on to discussion of the August symposium.

Avoid putting wildly different things in the same message, particularly in business correspondence. It sometimes makes sense to do that, but think about it. Mostly, two very different topics are better sent in two messages. Relax this a bit with personal correspondence, but still... think about putting key bits ("directions to the party") in their own, separate messages, so they're easy to find and file away.

Remember that attachments usually stay with the message, so avoid putting some important bit that the recipient will likely want to save... in a message that has 5 MB of photos from the dog show.

And...

Don't forward "jokes" and "inspirational" messages. Just don't. You can bet that most of your recipients will have already gotten 17 copies, and most of the ones who haven't won't appreciate it anyway. I always enjoy something that someone decided to send *me*, because it seems to fit *my* taste. I never want something that you blasted to everyone in your address book.

Barry Leiba of NY @ Jun 08, 2008 13:14:40 PM