We’ve had a bit to say recently on the subject of email auto-signatures and bad email etiquette, but some emails don’t need to be opened for you to know that they’re wasting your time.
My own pet email peeve is emails with a subject line of ‘link exchange request’ or the like. They’re spam, but spam that’s often just individually customised enough to not always fall into the automatic spam filter alongside the Nigerian scams, genital enlargements and promises of a fabulous new career.
I mentioned this on Twitter and got a couple of other suggestions, including “Catchup for coffee” and “Moving forward” (ahem). But I figure Lifehacker readers will have other ideas. So which email subject lines act like a red rag for a bull, or send you racing to the delete key? Tell us in the comments.
Emily
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 3:06 PMAnything that has FW: ahead of it generally gets the delete button to it, unless what follow it actually looks important or it is information someone has forwarded me about an event or a meeting.
Orin
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 3:17 PMI hate it when people I work with use URGENT/IMPORTANT, then not replying for days for further clarification.
Andreas
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 3:45 PMFW: FW: RE: FW: RE: RE: Some subject here.
Those get deleted pretty quickly.
Bogus Jimmy
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 4:27 PMMy 2 biggest pet peeves with email subjects:
1. No subject (i.e. blank)
2. The whole message in the subject and nothing in the body.
Grim
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 5:08 PMYeah blank subjects are my most hated – my wife always sends me emails like that.
Nearly as bad are those messages that start in the subject line and continue through to the body.
david
Saturday, July 24, 2010 at 10:31 PMI tend to reply to these with the subject line:
“RE:your email with nothing in the subject line which is almost as annoying as having to many words in the subject line”
Gets a message, gets a few laughs, don’t think it has offended anyone too much..
Chris
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 4:35 PMassuming we’re talking about legit emails, not spam –
Definitely a blank subject is annoying
or something useless like “Question” or “Please Help”,
Sam
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 4:48 PMWhen it’s just something like “Hello” in the subject line. I’ll still read it, but it puts me on the defensive straight away thinking it could be spam/virus.
the Odd one
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 5:09 PMAs long as there is something in the subject line that is spelt correctly, is not the entire email and it isn’t filled with FW: FW: FW: FW: RE: FW: type crap, I’m usually good with it.
Slightly off topic, There’s a thread over at Whirlpool about pet computer hates: http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1483475
Evan
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 5:58 PMI agree with Jimmy on number one. Blank subject lines.
Not always with number two though. Sometimes if the email is a simple request that I’ve fulfilled I’ll just reply and just prepend “Done EOM” to the subject, if that’s all the information that I need to convey.
The “EOM” is critical here though. It tells the recipient, “All there information you need is here, you don’t even need to open the email.”
e.g. “Done EOM Re: Could you restart the server for me.”
Succinct and saves everybody’s time.
E.
tapir
Thursday, July 22, 2010 at 9:50 PMI have to say that in my case, there is a high correlation between the subject line and the sender line – so much so that certain senders get my back up even before I’ve glanced at the subject line.
Why is that, I wonder ;)
Scoon
Friday, July 23, 2010 at 4:35 AMAnnoying work email subject lines:
- ‘hey’ / blank. Gives absolutely no indication as to content of email.
- ‘URGENT URGENT DO THIS NOW!!!!!!’ and then body is something like ‘I lost my favourite pen! Everybody help me look for it!!!’
- ‘Meeting’. Who with? When? Where? Should be ‘Meeting – 4pm Rm 6 all employees’ and then further explanation / agenda in the body.
- ‘Thanks! :o)’ When you have completed a task for somebody and they reply with that subject line and a blank body. Just a waste of time.
- ‘hi can you please make sure you get that report in by 5pm today as it is really really important and if we dont get it in we will be in deep…’ Ad infinitum
- And lastly, subject lines that sound important, and then when you read the body there is maybe one line regarding some insignificant aspect, and then a huge paragraph about the sender’s weekend/the weather/the last episode of lost.
Yes, there are a lot of things that annoy me about work communications! In my last role I was given the project of educating the office about better emailing. Would love to do it as a job; nothing ruins a good office environment more easily than bad communication.