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Descriptive Subject, or No One Writes to the Colonel

Descriptive subject lines are two way streets: give a good one, get a good one back.

The problem is so many people don’t care for good subject lines.  A succinct subject line is as important to good communication as the medium that is used. It’s as important that an email is sent and received successfully, as it is that the email be properly understood.

If your email inbox is empty, context might not matter and meaning is mere presence.  If your email inbox is full, context, brevity and succinct meaning make email messages stand out.

Of course, the real problem is that email as a killer app long ago stopped being useful.  No one writes meaningful email messages any more; there is too little communication happening, and people are using media other than email to do it. (Remember hearing/reading about the incident when someone was fired thru a message on facebook?)

Comments (2)

John:

Have you seen the new "Project Natal" from Microsoft? Its the new Xbox 360. Granted I am not a gamer at all but the technology advancements in xbox 360 are amazing. I have never seen something like this myself! just google project natal.

I too often receive emails with "Re:" as the subject line. Good suggestions.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on June 1, 2009 3:18 PM.

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