Subject says it all.

[dougo]

I hate reading an email message (or forum post, etc) whose body just says "Subject says it all." The purpose of a subject field is to provide a summary of the content of a message, e.g. for an index list. In particular, the subject should not provide any information that is not also in the body. If you come up with a subject line and then discover you really have nothing more to say, it's a simple matter to copy-and-paste the subject line into the body.

Even worse is a message that starts with "Subject says it all." and then goes on to say more things. All means all! There's no more after all!

[Edit: Oops, I meant to post this to stopsayingthat! Sorry for the excess negative energy in my personal journal.]

Comments

[nosrednayduj]

I usually put no body at all in such a message. Do you hate that too?

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Yeah, kind of. I don't always read the subject line before opening a message, and it's disorienting to open up a message and see... no message.

[ahkond.livejournal.com]

I have coworkers who do the "subject, but no body" thing, and others who do the "body, but no subject" thing.

One guy starts typing on the subject line and keeps typing with no distinction. The effect is that the subject line is the first line or sentence of what should be the body, and the subject line is usually not a good subject (it may be something like "Here's an idea" or "how are you doing".

I want to harm them all.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

That's annoying, but I'm realizing that that doesn't actually bother me as much as "Subject says it all". It's like they know there's something wrong with leaving the body blank, but they just waste words drawing attention to the fact that they can't figure out how not to leave it blank.

[chris-warrior.livejournal.com]

i didn't find this all that negative, next to some of the drama that exploded on my friendslist this morning. i kinda found it amusing.

did i miss the point?

:-P

[dkuznick.livejournal.com]

Subject says it all.

[anyeone.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that I have, on occasion, put an EOM tag in my subject line after the succinct description of the point. Usually this is at work though, where brevity is valued.

Example:

Subject: Code deployed to test server (eom).

That's all they need to know, after all.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

Where did that acronym even come from, though? It's bizarre, it's like some crossover tradition from ham radio or something. And the whole point of not leaving the body blank is that people might not read the subject, so how is adding something more to the subject going to help?

[anyeone.livejournal.com]

Don't you see the subject before the body in most email clients? I don't think any of the clients I've used show the body before the subject, unless you set MS Word to preview mode or something like that.

[dougo.livejournal.com]

I see the subject first, but it barely registers. There's often so much other noise in the subject, like "[spielfrieks] Re: Re:" or whatever. Also, my client (vm in Emacs) only shows about the first 30 characters of the subject line in the summary window, so if you put the "(eom)" at the end, chances are I won't even see it until I've already opened the message (and am looking at the body region expecting a message to be there).

Subject, Message and Who is sending!

[(Anonymous)]

As a user of Microsoft Outlook, I have set my messages to show the subject line only and cut off at 50-60 chars display (I think). For me, if the person cannot say something in the subject line in 30-40 chars, then it almost certain to get the lowest priority in the read list. More than the subject line, I tend to look at who is sending the message. Some folks, get instant read/action, while some, I don't care if I respond this lifetime (that is a different conversation). I am almost always annoyed with subject ending or at the end (although, I have done that many atime, guilty!). I feel somehow cheated, when there is no message body to follow the dang subject line. It feels like, 'are you so busy that you cannot spend a few more milliseconds to type the message!'. If you are that busy, send an IM! or Txt on phone!

(sorry ranting! friday not treating me well, too many emails with dopey subject lines!)
-- coolkit

Nice quote

[(Anonymous)]

A committee is a life form with six or more legs and no brain.
-- Lazarus Long, "Time Enough For Love"


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