Subject line tricks
Inspired by a recent email exchange with Marc, I started thinking about email tricks–specifically, little abbreviations in the subject line. The one I use the most is "<EOM>", which means "End of Message." I use it when I’m just sending a quick note to someone and I don’t really want to make a whole message out of it. For instance, if I’m done hogging the fast printer in the office, I might send a note with a subject that says "Done printing <EOM>." When my recipients see the message from me, they know exactly what I’m talking about and they can just delete the message right away, without opening it.
That’s the only subject line trick I’ve got, but it works so well that it makes me curious about what other folks are using. If you use some cryptic subject line message, drop it in the comments. I’ll summarize (and credit you) in a later post for posterity…
In a completely unrelated note, I won’t be answering email today ’cause I’m not here. I’m here. This’ll be my last (and only) day of snowboarding in a year otherwise barren of any decent riding conditions. Don’t know why I didn’t go to Bachelor sooner, but them’s the breaks.
I had a boss that did something similar, using “n/t” for “no text”.
The company I work for (Steve Jackson Games) uses email lists for playtesting games, which often get a lot of traffic. To help coordinate, there are a set of rules for tagging posts: basically, a chapter tab (ie – [CH2]) followed by a general category ([FACTS] or [STYLE]).
My subject line “trick” is to use it as a “summary” line.
Instead of “Friday’s meeting,” I’ll say, “Fri. meeting moved to Monday,” and put the details in the body.
Instead of “stationery order,” I’ll say, “stationery order – corrections required”
I can’t always summarize the whole thing, but I can usually do better than the simple two-word thing that first popped into mind.
I’ve used the trick, but have ended up answering a reply something to the effect, “your email was blank, please resend.” The net effect is to spend more time replying than I saved in the shortcut.
Josh OOO ROD RBCOP
means
Josh out of office rest of day, reachable by cell or pager.
Stuff like this has almost become a self parody in my group at work. We try to see how cryptic we can be and still be understood. The threshold is much further on the cryptic side that I would have initally guessed. :-)
Josh Bancroft
http://www.tinyscreenfuls.com/
I worked for a Canadian bank, and we had a policy of prefacing the subject line with one of three ‘tags’: URG, ACT, or FYI — urgent action needed, action needed, or simply informational. we joked that they needed to add ‘USL’ for useless emails, the volume of which always seemed to be triple that of normal email.
Bren,
Yeah, with all the email any little bit helps.
There was an article in Fast Company a while back about this very thing:
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/44/intel.html
Jon
All e-mails I send have a short 4-6 letter prefix to help identify the project/task/subject they are related to. It makes replies a lot easier to pick out. It also helps in sorting and filtering when I need to work on only one project and ignore everything else.
For example
Proj1-Status Update
Proj1-New server list
Proj3-New server PO
I don’t do it as often as I should (but then neither do others I work with), changing the subject line to be more appropriate can be very helpful. In particular in combination with shortening the original e-mail.
Example:
You receive a monthly status report from somebody with the subject line “MSR Joe Bloggs March 2005″. One specific point raises a concern, say project X, and you want to forward to somebody with a comment.
Most people just forward the whole mail with an unchanged subject line, i.e. “FW: MSR Joe Bloggs March 2005″.
I recommend to change the subject line to what the e-mail is really about, e.g. “Issue with Project X, need your input”. And then remove all the points from the MSR not related to project X.
As with any communications system/jargon, if the goal is efficiency, you need to agree among the group involved on the protocols – the accepted terms, what they mean, when they’re used, and what the expected reaction/response should be.
I’ve worked in offices where they use Hot/Action/Info for priorities. If someone new comes in and doesn’t understand the jargon and protocols, this doesn’t always make sense to them.
Of course, with any human system, once people get the hang of the basic protocals, they WILL extend and “enhance” the language and protocols.
I’m with Rob. All my emails are sent with a prefix.
Common ones are:
Link: (for a cool site or stuff)
News: (industry related news)
ProjectNumber: (for project related stuff)
Launch: (for something that went live)
FYI: (for your info, usually of small importance)
We have used normal subject line with a pre-pended priority code such as:
911: Subject Line Here (emergency, or extremely urgent — needs to be dealt with immediately)
811: Subject Line Here (very important — needs to be dealt with within the hour)
411: Subject Line Here (just general info — deal with it at your leisure)
Also when an issue was sent to a group of people, whoever was going to deal with the matter would reply-to-all with IGI: Re: Subject Line Here. (IGI meaning “I Got It”)
in my group of friends, rather than a workplace (although most of the email are read in a corporate env) we use the following prefixes:
“fun/” for stuff that are amusing or fnny
“link/” for more informational links
“!!!/” for important things.
i find that the diagonal line of the slash makes for a very good separator. while not taking as much space as [ and ]. using it you don’t need to space between the tag and the subject line.