{"id":23723,"date":"2008-01-23T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-23T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2008\/01\/23\/email-tip-dont-use-a-rude-subject-line-just-to-make-your-message-easier-to-spot\/"},"modified":"2008-01-23T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-23T10:00:00","slug":"email-tip-dont-use-a-rude-subject-line-just-to-make-your-message-easier-to-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20080123-00\/?p=23723","title":{"rendered":"Email tip: Don&#039;t use a rude subject line just to make your message easier to spot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Here are some subject lines I&#8217;ve seen over the past few years (suitably redacted):<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>!!! BLOCK WRITING TO CD DRIVE !!! <\/li>\n<li>___] Kernel objects naming convention [___ <\/li>\n<li>[QQ] &#8211; Question about job objects <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> Sure, using exclamation points, all capital letters, or strange eye-catching punctuation marks makes it easier for you to spot replies to your message in your inbox, but it&#8217;s also rude to your readers, who almost certainly do not consider your message as important as you do.\n Imagine if everybody did this.\n If it&#8217;s that important that it easy for you to spot replies to your message, set up a mail filter rule that highlights them.<\/p>\n<p> And, just because I collect these things, here are some unhelpful subject lines that I&#8217;ve seen in the past six months: <\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>need help <\/li>\n<li>Need help! <\/li>\n<li>customer question <\/li>\n<li>customer question &#8211; <\/li>\n<li>customer questions <\/li>\n<li>Need help on two questions <\/li>\n<li>SR# 1 &#8211; 61803399 <\/li>\n<li>RE: [RESENDING] [QUERY] RE: SR# 1 &#8211; 61803399 <\/li>\n<li>Windows 2003 IIS issue <\/li>\n<li>MSCS <\/li>\n<li>Looking for a way to do this <\/li>\n<li>Is this a bug? <\/li>\n<li>Microsoft question <\/li>\n<li>Vista question <\/li>\n<li>Questions about using Vista <\/li>\n<li>Quick Question! <\/li>\n<li>Customer Question <\/li>\n<li>here&#8217;s my question for the XYZ team <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p> Sometimes, the people who commit the sin of the useless subject line also follow up with the second sin of <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.msdn.com\/oldnewthing\/archive\/2007\/04\/13\/2106139.aspx\"> repeating their question verbatim because nobody answered it<\/a>. Nobody answered it because the subject line was not obviously in anybody&#8217;s specific area of expertise. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here are some subject lines I&#8217;ve seen over the past few years (suitably redacted): !!! BLOCK WRITING TO CD DRIVE !!! ___] Kernel objects naming convention [___ [QQ] &#8211; Question about job objects Sure, using exclamation points, all capital letters, or strange eye-catching punctuation marks makes it easier for you to spot replies to your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[130,103],"class_list":["post-23723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-email","tag-non-computer"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"<p>Here are some subject lines I&#8217;ve seen over the past few years (suitably redacted): !!! BLOCK WRITING TO CD DRIVE !!! ___] Kernel objects naming convention [___ [QQ] &#8211; Question about job objects Sure, using exclamation points, all capital letters, or strange eye-catching punctuation marks makes it easier for you to spot replies to your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23723"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23723\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}