Subject Lines and File Names

I am sure you can all imagine how much email I deal with on a daily basis, and I am sure you can all appreciate how many documents I file on a regular basis — all you need to do to is multiply the assignments you are responsible for each week by the number of students in the class, and you can easily imagine how many documents I deal with daily — and this is one of the three courses I teach.

Yesterday,  I was ready to take a look at some of the revised proposals I asked for last week and I found some messages that contain questions waiting for my response. When you send me an email with a question, please indicate this in the subject line. I do not open all the emails that arrive in my box daily; rather, I file them according to their subject. In this case, I opened this message expecting to find a revised Report Proposal because the subject line said: Report Proposal. But what I found was an unanswered question.

This is an excellent example of why it is so important that you consider the Subject line carefully – how can you best assist your reader in terms of identifying the message without opening? How can you enable your reader to quickly file the message?  Or, alternatively, if your email requires a response, how can you alert your reader to that necessity?  In this case the subject of this message should have been: 301 Questions about Report Proposal Revisions.

While the emails you use to communicate with in this course are only worth 7% of your total grade, it is nonetheless so important that you learn the skill of professional emailing – and that you understand the differences between the purpose of sending a memo or a message. If there were a final exam for this course, I would ask that question, because it is important; memos serve a different purpose and different reader[s]  then messages. And as you are aware, today, emailing is the main form of communications between professionals.

First, what are the differences between a pdf file and a word doc file? If you do not know the answer to this question, please go to the index in our text book and look up PDF (Portable Document Format).

All attached files must be correctly named. When I receive an attached file, I need to file that attachment. I spend endless hours, it seems, opening and changing names of student files and then re-saving and then deleting the original unnamed file, when what I need to be doing is providing feed back and evaluations.

Sometimes, I open an incorrectly named file, and the document does not have a student name, there is no date and sometimes, not even a name for the assignment. So, I have to stop and figure out who’s work I am looking at –  and then name and date and title the document before re-file  – when what I want to be doing is providing feedback and evaluations.

The moral behind this post about subject lines and file names is: ALWAYS CONSIDER YOU READER’S NEEDS FIRST. Stop and think about how your document or message or memo will be used  – who is reading, who is filing, is your message or document likely to be passed on to another reader? If so, you need to consider all possible readers.

There was quite a bit of confusion over this line of instructions in lesson 2:2:

I hope these notes are helpful and that all future correspondence will have clear and complete subject lines, and all future attachments will be correctly named, and the attached document will include student name, date, and title of the document at the top. Thanks and enjoy.