If you put “Thank you. EOM” in the subject, thus deleting the old one, your recipient will only know what it is in reference to if there’s only one recent email thread you’ve had with them.

I expect subject lines to be informative. When they say “Hi,” “Update,” “Interesting,” or “FYI,” I’m not impressed, but the worst is a blank subject line.

Another pet peeve is people who send a message to my main email address and a copy to a secondary one of mine, or even a third one. When I receive two or three messages at the same time with the same subject line, I think it’s spam and I start hitting delete.

Thanks for letting me vent. I feel better now.

Such as opening with “Dear…” and closing with:

“I am (or remain),

Yours very truly,”

I’m not a formal person by any means, but I think that the “structure” of emails is eroding courtesy in communications. No opening salutation, no closing salutation…there’s a kind of ‘mechanical intimacy’ that I don’t find appropriate.

Emails are also deleterious to my writing. If I have been answering a slew of emails, I find that when I get back to ‘real’ writing, I am more awkward, and need some time to settle back into my voice.

Using the draft function and waiting to send an email has saved my bacon countless times. I’ve also found using relevant subject lines is essential, especially so I can find info later. Burying questions throughout an email drives me batty! Thanks for the reminder to use EOM and NNTR. Too bad this post can’t be sent to all U.S. businesses.

I’m not sure I can ignore the Thank you though. Maybe I could put that in the subject: Thank you. EOM.

Thanks for sharing these great ideas.