A Random Rant about Email

Posted by Johnny at 10:57 a.m.

Ok, here's something that has really pissed me off lately: People who suck at filling in the "Subject" field in an email.

As the name suggests, the Subject field is used to indicate what the actual message is about. Seems simple, doesn't it? Apparently not, since a significant portion of my email is ambiguously (or stupidly) subject-ed.

NOTE: If your name appears in a "From" entry and you want it bleeped out, please let me know. Also, I don't mean any personal offense to any of the senders on the "bad" list - I'm just in a ranting kind of mood.

Let me begin with some examples of good subject lines:

• From: Reid, Subject: The Remository
  
  This is a great subject line because I knew exactly what the email was about before opening it. Even though most people would scratch their heads at this one, it showed Reid knew his audience (me) and which words were meaningful to me.
  
  
• From: Tristin, Subject: Your Blog! about Five Star Affair
  
  Yet another great subject line. Without reading the email, the subject told me that Tristin had read this blog, specifically the post I made about FSA, and had feedback to give me in regards to that post.
  
  
• From: Apple, Subject: Time Sensitive: Please verify your email address
  
  Not only did they tell me what they wanted directly in the subject line, they also indicated that they needed it quickly by specifiying "Time Sensitive." Marvellous!
  
  
• From Rob, Subject: ONB - Rehearsal Schedule April/May/June
  
  This is a great subject because even though I naturally assume that emails from Rob are concerning One Nite Band or the Jazz Orchestra, he included "ONB" in the title to clarify this. Reading the rest of the title told me right away that I'd be looking at a rehearsal schedule and would need to open my calendar to adjust dat,es if necessary, for the months of April, May, and June.
  

Ok, those were some of the really good ones I'd receveid in the last month. Now, here are some mediocre ones (although it's my style, mediocrity has no place in a Subject line).

• From: Rob, Subject: May 27th @ Rafter 6
  
  Now, this one was pretty good because coming from Rob, I knew it had to be related to either One Nite Band or the Jazz Orchestra, and thus the date and location specified was most likely related to a gig. The thing I would have really liked to see in the title was the word "Cancelled." You see, to get this information, I had to open his message and read the email, but by adding one word to the title, he could have saved me from reading the message entirely.
  
  
• From: Jenna, Subject: Going Away Party --SURPRISE
  
  This one was okay because I could assume that I was being invited to a surprise going away party. What I would have really liked to see was the name of the person who the party is for and perhaps even the date of the party. An acceptable title would have been "Surprise Party for ***** - May 11." That would have made my day.
  
  
• From: Haysam, Subject: Apples and Oranges
  
  This subject puzzled me at first. I thought, "What the fuck?". But then after reading the email it made sense. You see, he was asking me to help him install Microsoft Office on his Macintosh laptop and made a reference to Apple and MS to be incomparable. Clever, but confusing at first.

Alright, now that I've shown the good and pretty good, it's time for the fun/enraging stuff. Here come the bad!

• From: Dawn, Subject: Quadrus Development Inc.
  
  This email started a long thread of conversation between me and the human resources manager at my new company. We had been previously introduced a number of times and so I could easily associate her name with the company name. Why, then, did she feel the need to put the company name as the subject of the email? The message is obviously going to pertain to Quadrus, why not put a title like, "Invitation to Corporate Event - tonight, 5:30 pm @ Stampede." That would tell me everything I needed to know and the message itself could be a more formal icing on the cake, with all the pleasantries of conversation.
  
  Furthermore, she used this same thread of conversation to start a new, completely unrelated discussion with me. A new topic deserves a new subject line.
  
  
• From: James, Subject: Hey Guys
  
  Ok, "Hey Guys" is not a subject in the loosest sense of the word. It is a greeting used at the beginning of a message body. The message itself was a series of unrelated questions, so a possible title could have been "Questions about forgotten gear, next rehearsal, and Saturday Night." That would have been much more informative.
  
  
• From: Lauren, Subject:
  
  Yes, the subject field was left blank. Why??? How could a message not have a subject if the message itself was not blank? Not to mention, that every email I get from this person has a blank subject, so these all end up being threaded into the same conversation in my Mail program. That irks me a bit.
  
  
• From: Rob, Subject: Tune
  
  Okay, this is pretty ambiguous. What exactly is this message about? Is it about a song that I should hear? Is it about a song you found? Is it about tuning an instrument? So many possibilities!!!!

And last but not least, the email message that inspired this rant:

• From: Zeev, Subject: from Zeev
  
  OH MY GOD! Every email he sends me has this exact subject. Has he never used an email client before? I mean, how could he not realize that the sender is displayed next to the subject of every email, thus completely eliminating the need to respecify the sender in the subject. FUCK! It makes me want to crawl in a hole and convulse.

Well, I hope you enjoyed that. I also hope you learned something about email subjects. I bet whoever reads this will either become completely self-conscious about their subjects to the point of OCD, or they will send me messages with shitty-ass subjects out of spite. Either way, it's cool with me. Just know that the shitty-ass ones are going to show up on this blog.