A good email subject

Something very simple such as giving due consideration to having a clear subject (title) in your emails, can improve productivity and reduce frustrations in life.

It is also, I would like to define as, a good email ethic - thinking of it's impact on the recipient and even on yourself when you try to search for the email in future.

A few considerations when thinking of an email subject.

1. When the recipient sees the subject, they immediately know exactly what the email is about.

2. When we look for the email, we can easily identify it by the email subject.

3. It's not too short, nor too long.

Some scenarios of irresponsible email subjects :

a) Have you ever received an email with subject : "PO", when in your work, you receive 20-30 Purchase Orders per day?

b) Or the subject is RE : Lunch at Aiman. But the content is about a factory's request. Of course it didn't start off like that. In the email correspondence, they trailed off to discussing about work, but didn't border to change the email subject.

In the end, say after a few weeks, when you want to refer back to the email for the conclusion, who would have thought it'll be in an email titled, Lunch at Aiman??

c) Email subject shouldn't come with exclamation marks, like : SHIPMENT INFO!! like it's an emergency, and then the content reveals that it's only asking for details of a future shipment.

If email subjects are clear and informative, it could be a good source for knowledge management, which was the buzz a few years ago. (Don't seem to hear much of it now. I guess academic and worldly knowledge ARE replaceable). It could also mean that it will be easier and faster to look for emails.

So.. be.