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Context, Please: Why My Email Confuses Me

I get around 200 email messages a day. If that doesn't seem unusual to you, read no farther; but to me, that's a lot of mail. It's not hard to get that much, either. Try subscribing to a few mailing lists and you, too, can have the privilege of an overloaded mail box. At least there's always something new to read.

Most of my mail gets a quick scan before getting tossed, but there are always a few important messages nestled among the rest, so I try not to be too quick with the delete key. This isn't from choice. If I had my druthers I'd do this winnowing quickly and move on. But I can't, because it's so hard to figure out the point of some email. And how can you tell whether something's important when you can't figure out why it was sent to you?

Sure, some messages are no-brainers, like MAKE MONEY FA$T, or Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Fwd: Joke. But what would you think when you see the subject Jenny Troubles? It could be reference to a (now ex-)coworker. Unless it's about the Curtiss "Jenny" aircraft, which pops up a lot on the World War 1 modeling list that I'm on. Is that message going to be a good gossipy read, an announcement that Jenny is out sick, or a plea for aircraft plans in 1/48 scale? You'd be surprised how many sentences into an email you have to read to figure this out. (Jenny, if you're reading this, it was the latter.)

How about this subject: Tabloid Question: is it about the National Enquirer, printer paper, or the Sopwith Tabloid? Gotta read it to find out.

Maybe you're thinking that there's an easy solution here, right? Just put the word "model" in the subject line and the confusion goes away.

Doesn't work for me. I still get regular correspondence from the Unreal community about the 3D Studio Max model converter that I wrote back in 1998. So when an email has Modeling Tips as a subject, it might mean plastic WW1 models, it might mean computer 3D models.... I gotta read it to find out.

At least I can rule out that they're looking for fashion models.

A recent email had Perversely Irregular Polygons as the subject line. I was positive that it was about the model converter. Then I actually read the message and found out that it was about a German WW1 aircraft camouflage pattern.

For some people, "World War 1" in the subject line would dispel the confusion, but not me. History pops up on my wargaming mailing list, and it's not rare to see WW1 discussions there. So when I see mail labeled WW1 Air Combat, is it from my gaming friends or my modeling friends? Gotta read it to find out.

While the above messages were confusing because of my own interests, sometimes email is just plain confusing on its own merits. My favorite was titled Fire?. It read, in its entirety:

Only missiles discharged through the use of fire (i.e. ignited gunpowder, cordite etc.) are said to be fired. Arrows and slings are shot or loosed, javelins are thrown. A good generic word would be discharged.

...and that's it. Well, it's true, but why would you bother writing to me about it? Then I remembered my Great Battles of History game pages, where I use the term "fire" to describe what a bow does to an arrow. Ohhhhhh, that's what he's going on about! This won my "highest ratio of cogitation required compared to words used" award. But, "missile fire" is the term used in the game rules, so I'm not going to change it. Sorry!

So if you're thinking on clicking on the addresses below, give me a break: choose a good, relevant subject line and tell me exactly why you're writing in the first sentence or two, okay?

Dave Townsend / townsend@patriot.net / 16-Jan-00

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