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Email "Purpose" tags

fraserspeirs | Nov 22 2005

At work today, I started using a new tag at the beginning of all my email. The four I'm currently using are:

- [Purpose: I consider this message to be for your information.]
- [Purpose: I consider this message a request for information]
- [Purpose: I consider this message urgent.]
- [Purpose: I consider that this message requires an action on your part.]

...in the hope that it would help people to process what I'm saying (and encourage them to use same). Anyone else using similar things? What other kinds of tag would you add?

Fraser

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Chrome47's picture

Aside from being longer and...

Submitted by Chrome47 on November 23, 2005 - 7:21am.

fraserspeirs wrote:
sabreuse wrote:
Aside from being longer and (possibly, depending on their mail client configuration) requiring people to open the email to find out which category a message fits in, I don't see how this is all that different from the fairly standard use of subject lines like

The reason I'm using longer and more wordy tags right now is because I felt that simply appending [Action Needed] to the subject might initially appear a bit rude to people not expecting it.

I'd say probably the best thing to do is use very specific subject lines. Use "Urgent" sparingly. (I once had a co-worker whose emails were ALL marked Urgent. I guess it says something about how she operated.)

In my opinion, using the word "Purpose" after "Subject" is redundant and insulting, assuming that people won't understand that the Subject of the email indicates the purpose of the message.

You could use subject lines like "FYI: (subject)," "Request for info: (topic)," or "URGENT! (subject)."

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