1. descriptive subjects

• Posted by unkmar Oct 01, 2010
• 844 views

Descriptive subjects are important.

You waste a few peoples time by using meaningless or nearly meaningless subjects. Many more people simply ignore messages that lack a proper subject.

Bad Subjects:

• Help
• Confused
• Euphoria Problem
• Forum Problem
• programming issue
• poll
• vote
• idea
• Any time now

That doesn't mean not to use those words.

Better Subjects:

• [Help] where is split()
• [Help] find_all_but algorithm?
• [Poll] Google javascript use
• [Vote] Win32lib use
• [Forum] Error, Profile save
• [OT] Did you see ISS this morning?
• Faster algo? magic_dust()
• Release date? Euphoria v4.01b
• [Next Release?] Euphoria v4.01b

Notice the subjects are short and can still use the words from the previous examples. Those words are only starting points towards your goal. Think of it like you are doing a web search? What keywords do you think will give good hits with a web search. And for those that may not know (OT = OffTopic) You could use colon(:), semi-colon(;), or dash(-) as logic separators. I like the bracket for denoting the general topic like Help and then using the more descriptive subject or keywords after that. Notice how I make use of question mark (?) to point out that I'm asking a question instead of making a statement. [Release Date] Is a statement. A release date is expected in the message. Where as [Release Date?] implies a question of when is it expected?