Subjective approach

[022] ... [Trends]

Of course, though with email largely continuing as an unavoidable organizational tool, taken over by messaging apps, and having turned passe for personal communication to a great extent these days, one aspect of it came to mind during the last post, and I thought of adding it anyway in continuation.

What you notice during a new mail notification, on the desktop or phone is the subject and sender info. If the subject conveys in brief what's in the body, it becomes clear to take action or delay when not important. But how about a subject line saying "I won't be able to attend today's meeting due to personal issues. Sorry friends." with the body containing the same with signature? That's what someone followed methodically on an email group. No amount of explaining to put it in a crisper manner to include details in the body had any effect, seems that's how everyone in his office communicated! You need tons of patience dealing with such. It's important no doubt to make yourself clear, but to this extent?

There was another friend who would change the subject line when replying, each time for every reply! Same reason: that's what their office had instructed to follow to show a project's progress. Unable to make him understand to stick to the original to build-up a thread, I had to finally learn to live with it. There were some who always clicked "Reply to all" for every mail, even when it was a general notification of an event sent to all members, just to say thank you.

For a while I was annoyed with someone who never seemed to read beyond the first line whenever my mail sought clarifications on many things. Just an OK as a reply never got understood as to which it really referred to, resulting in a volley of exchanges. Finally I resorted to sending separate mail for each of such doubts or suggestions, and finally stuck to numbered lists, with each item carrying a "Your reply:" formatted in bold red so he could just fill-in. It worked!

And then there was another... Well, forget it. We have all encountered such who would forward jokes and unwanted to all the contacts, with each one under the To field; or those who would embed dozens of their hi-res travel photos, and the naïve recipients who would just reply to all just to say Wow with each of such carrying those embeds resulting in wasted bandwidth, downloading the same every time; blank subject or missing attachment and such. That's how the world is made-up of needing your acceptance. Or may be they find us the same from their viewpoint when we mark the subject as "Yesterday's discussion" than elaborating further, or only reply to the sender than all when really not required...