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October 16, 2008
Gmail promotes bad etiquette
I must protest! Gmail’s latest tip reveals what I consider one of emails greatest, and most often abused etiquette faux pas (not to be confused with fopas or fopaws) - The Empty Email Body. While this may seem perfect for Halloween, I assure you, this is far more scary.
I often send messages where the subject is the entire message (e.g. “Want to grab lunch at 12:30?”), and Gmail would always prompt me to add in body text.
Now, however, you can add “EOM” or “(EOM)” at the end of the subject line (short for End Of Message), and Gmail will silently send the message without the unnecessary prompt. - Official Gmail Blog: Sending empty messages
The problem is, I and trillions of people like me, don’t read the subject line of every email - especially at work. We can easily preview the message and read the content. Even Gmail shows the first few words of every message. Besides, I know the subject of most emails simply by who it came from. For me, it’s more of a key word function than part of the message. In fact, I should be able to read the message body and guess the subject line. And note that this is called a subject line and not “title”. You’re not writing a book.
So the proper form of the example email would be subject: “Lunch today?” Message Body: “Want to grab lunch at 12:30?” [END]
If this is too much trouble, try picking up the phone you lazy bar-turd.
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You seriously are writing a blog about how you don’t like EOM? Wtf???
My cliche response to you: “Different strokes for different folks.”
I believe this is also the premise behind Gmail offering this simple feature - flexibility for the many different ways people choose to look at email.
Sorry, I disagree. I do read (sometimes only) the subject, and maybe trillions of people do the same :-)
What can I say, it’s a pet peeve. And to be clear, I wrote a post about it, not a blog. But maybe you got confused by the similar posts listed at the end of each post. For the most part, I love using Gmail - I just don’t like this practice in general.
I’m glad we have you here to show us all the way to proper email etiquette.
I think that your version is redundant, especially between two people who communicate frequently throughout the day.
I completely agree! ESPECIALLY at work it can be extremely annoying and quite rude.
I must concur! Omitting the mail body is like licking the stamp on a letter expecting the recipient to derive its message by analyzing the DNA in your saliva!
Bad form, Gmail. Bad form indeed….
this actually makes sense if the other person uses, for example, outlook express without previews… so they get “john doe - want to grab lunch” and you don’t have to open it.
Why not just copy and paste the info from subject to body then? I’d still add (EOM) to the subject, though, so that people know they don’t *have* to click through to view the message. (Perhaps this should be the EOM feature - copy the subject to the blank body when sending)
I think it’s unfair to say Gmail promotes bad etiquette. Just because it doesn’t meet your etiquette standards or the standards of “high society” emailers does not mean it promotes bad etiquette. Also, you should guess the message body content from reading the subject, not the other way around.
ok, you don’t like this practice… but to say it is bad etiquette, I guess is too much. From my early days with the BBSs, this was a very nice and useful etiquette (at that time I was using Telix to read my email)… I also use Gmail (among other mail clients today) and I find this an useful tip and best netiquette… but, the only thing we have are opinions about it…
I actually got into the habit at my old job whereby if I wanted people to actually read my email (if it was something important) and it was going to a ton of people (criteria change/procedure change or something) I just wouldn’t set a subject.
I agree this isn’t actually the most intelligent idea in the world.
Still, better than the Email Goggles idea in the lab.
well, you know, I wouldn’t say that Gmail is promoting it. They’re just adding a feature for those who already do it. If they were promoting it, they would say “don’t write message bodies anymore. Just use EOM.”
I don’t think it’s bad etiquette, though. Not that i send emails in this fashion, but i do send email with attachments and no bodies. that’s probably a lot different to some, but still, same message comes up.
I kinda see it like an ashtray in a car. Are auto makers promoting smoking? No, they’re just adding a feature for those who do it anyway.
I have to agree about the “empty message” issue. It’s a lesser pet peeve of mine simply because I tend to look at who the email is from, glance for a very brief moment at the subject line (not necessarily “read” it), and then go to read the body of the message. I don’t get these often, but when there’s nothing there it makes me initially think that the message body just isn’t displaying correctly for some reason … until I actually read the subject line and see that they decided to inappropriately use e-mail as if it were an instant messenger. E-mails were designed to follow the format of office memos and messages should be formatted as such.
Also, being modeled after memos, an “instant” response shouldn’t be expected. This is another minor pet peeve of mine when the opposite is expected. Emails are more for sending out information or a request for information, not “chatting” or “texting”. Since you can’t know for certain if someone’s actually read an email (though that’s technically true of any message) you can’t expect instant feedback. Even with read receipts you can’t know if am email has actually been read as either some people won’t send receipts or, if they do, it just means the message was displayed, not necessarily read.
I think the bigger issue is you not taking the time to read the subject of your e-mails. Even with the preview / reading pane, you should still be comprehending the subject while you scan your e-mail.
There are trillions of people like you? I challenge your math, sir!
You don’t have to like it. Maybe now you’ll start reading subject lines? Or is that too much trouble for such a “lazy bar-turd”?
Get over yourself (what a douche).
Oh geez. Next you’ll try to tell us that it’s wrong to reply at the top of a message with the quoted text below it…
I don’t get it…if you use Gmail, the subject line and the start of the message are right next to each other. Why is it ever any easier to read the message and skip the subject line?
i like EOM
i think youre just overreacting …
You seem like an angry, hateful person. I wouldn’t have lunch with you.
You must have too much free time on your hands. There are a million other more important things to whine about. Pick something else. You don’t have to use the EOM feature but for those who wish to, it’s there.
i cant believe people are freaking out on the poster simply because they wrote a blog post about a pet peeve. the whole “you have too much time argument” doesnt work either, because if you think somebody has too much time on their hands for making a blog post about something that bothers them (which is one of the key functions of blogging), then people taking time to respond to say that the poster has too much time on their hands must also have too much time on their hands. i, in fact, and trying to “kill” 15 minutes right now. very fancy.
that said, i would rather have “no subject” and one line of text, but that’s just me. whatevs.
I THINK THAT IF THE SUBJECT LINE IS IN ALL CAPS GMAIL SHOULD SEND IT WITHOUT HAVING TO TYPE EOM. WHO HAS TIME FOR THAT? ALSO, WHO DECIDED THAT ALL CAPS IS “SHOUTING”? THAT’S DUMB. I THINK OF ALL CAPS AS REGULAR VOICE AND THE REST OF YOU ARE WHISPERING. PLEASE SPEAK UP!
bad etiquette? it’s email, not dinner at a 5 star restaurant. give it a reast and go save the world!
I generally have too much to say to actually fit in just the subject line.
For the lunch example, I’d ask where they wanted lunch, who’s buying, what I might have… and so on.
The only person I send emails with no ‘body’ to is myself, basically as just a quick reminder to do/find something when I get back from lunch - and usually the act of writing the email is enough to keep it in memory anyway.
As far as subjects of email go, I get a little annoyed at that as well. Sometimes my friend and I will email back and forth, change subjects a few times and he’s still replying as just a Re: so I end up changing it as it no longer includes the original information…
And I also get annoyed when I email someone something reasonably important, they don’t reply, and I have to ask them in person if they got any email, they say no, and I describe the email, then they remember. Then they complain I don’t send them enough email. :S
I don’t like ALL CAPS. Shouting or not it’s not quite as smooth to read. If there isn’t proper punctuation, all caps kills any clues as to where one thought begins and another ends.
Who has time to type 3 keys ?! I’m about 40WPM so that’s… uh 1/10 of a second here.
I find this feature quite useful. I send files to myself all the time. I don’t have any reason to type anything outisde of the subject line and dislike the constant reminder that my message body is empty.
“It’s just email…”
Right. If it stopped there. You let one thing slide though and it all goes downhill.
First it is just a friendly email with no body, followed by an inter-office email with some dates like Friday October 15/2008, then a office memo that looks like it’s formatted by a blind monkey. A newspaper for 18,000 people that has the date of “Julxy 12″ on the top of every page. A company wide internal document that doubles up movie descriptions and has titles like “That 70’s Shoe” DVD. By that time releasing a flyer to several *million* people with the second most expensive item (Rebel XSi - $850CN) with the wrong description (a $70 point and shoot stats and name) is “no big deal”. ALL REAL EXAMPLES
It’s the kind of thing I lose sleep over, but hey, why worry?
With everything that’s going on in the world right now, foreign and domestic, the subject line of an email is being debated this much? Nice. I’m kind of nervous about the future.
I think that while it may be bad email etiquette, I don’t care, and most importantly is that the people who use it don’t care either. I see no reason to put a subject on a simple one line email, and I also would not want to bother the person by making them open the email to read just one line. I always read the subject. Half the time that is how i decide whether i want to open the email right now or not. I also think that you are using poor email etiquette by not reading the subject before you open the message.
You don’t have to post this comment on your site, but this post is lame. Oh! I hate when people send emails with no body text, just a subject line! Oh, what is society coming to! Nooooooooooooooo! Lame. Just a lame excuse for a blog post.
Slippery slope. Different professions have their own ’standards’. If the email was in communication of two people that were frequent as in one example, the messages would be shortened. If one computer programmer was sending a lunch request to another, would they make sure their messages were painfully followed ‘by the book’? I would hunch ‘no’. Not because im a computer programmer, but as an IT professional.
It would be great if everyone followed procedures down to a perfect dotting i’s and crossing ‘t’ s. As other posts have shown, communications are degrading. Not because of the refusal of doing everything formally, but time-pressed, and deadline imposing projects usually means there’s less time for ‘proper communication’.
It also reflects on the human race that yes, we’re in fact human. Human beings make mistakes. Sure there are copy editors that will point out faults on public documents, but on personal (and even some work) correspondence, not everyone is going to run it by his or her ‘internal’ proof reader.
The response of that would be, “just take the time to write a more correct email”. In absolute theory yes; however, email mirrors real life. Meaning, people get cut-off on the highway all the time. People make up white lies, and pads expense accounts and steal office supplies.
We don’t live in a utopian world. we live in a world where impossible deadlines are placed and hardly no communication between employee and management. The author of this journal entry will object to the style of such emails; yet, from computer specialist to computer specialist that typically work 70-90 hours a week are typically burnt out that if one were to think about lunch, that’s *five* minutes off their insanely short “lunch break” or, the lunch break is a professional at his or her computer eating out of one hand and data processing on the other.
I’ve been there. Work in the IT field and see for yourself.
people like shortcuts. having the EOM flicked at the end of the subject line is quite useful, it shaves off some precious seconds. what’s not to like about it?
it’s not bad e-mail etiquette. give it a try. sooner or later you’ll get used to it.
but then again, if you still don’t like it, the earth will still revolve around the sun and it wouldn’t matter =)
Just be cool, and step away from the SMS enabled phone. It’s hazardous to your heath.
I do think its rude, poor etiquette and kinda confusing to write ‘EOM’ at the end of your ‘message’… Why should a recipient have to put up with that just so YOU didn’t have to click ‘OK.’
When I see an empty e-mail with a long subject heading as a message, it makes me think that the sender does not understand e-mail.
My god, your an idiot - try complaining about something worthwhile.
I would try to understand the use-case for this feature before complaining how silly it is. Consider the following scenario.
A team of coders are working on a project. For messages to all team members, they use a mailing list e.g. by sending a mail to all@coders.com. For a large team, there may be 100 messages a day. Quickly scanning subject lines for relevant info is a useful technique (e.g. “Overslept, coming late today EOM”, “Mysql died, working on it EOM”, etc).
That said, another way to approach the problem would be to simply introduce a preference checkbox, e.g. “alert me for empty messages”.
“try complaining about something worthwhile.”
He does, quite frequently - then nobody comments. :P
For the person that thought this is getting “too much attention”, last I checked there are millions, if not billions, of Internet users and like 20-30 comments here so far? Hardly a disproportionate amount of attention. Besides, the commenting will likely die down after a couple days anyway.
For all the nay-sayers (i.e. people who say that the poster is being trivial, should take in to account “alternative” practices, etc.), go back and actually read the post. I mean really read it. He’s saying that it’s a faux pas (i.e. a violation of a certain etiquette or social protocol). He’s not saying it’s “wrong” (a violation of ethics or morals) and that people who do this should have to walk the plank or something. It’s like saying “thank you” to a waiter/waitress when they bring you something. Is it “wrong” not to say it? I’d say not. Is it noticeably rude? Maybe, depends on the situation. Would it be more polite to say it? Absolutely.
I think the issue is that, like in mentioned one comment, the senders of the “subject only” e-mails are being a little “selfish” in that they just want to save themselves some time at the possible expense/irritation of others. Most, if not all, the “reasoning”, I’ve seen here as to why it’s “necessary” (for lack of a better term) to send out subject-only emails has been sketchy at best and sometimes a touch on the defensive side. It takes less than a second to click “ok” to send along an e-mail with no message body. Even for I’m in IT as well and get some of the same heavy workloads (I do the “eat at desk” deal most everyday anyway) and can still manage to send out emails with a message body and subject line.
Additionally, why wouldn’t you open (or in some cases “preview”) every message you receive? Just because the subject line has a short message doesn’t mean there isn’t something in the message body. To use the running example, the subject might say “Want to go to lunch?” but the body says “If so, you’re paying for both of us, is that ok?”. If you just read the subject line, don’t open the e-mail, and you’re available, you’ll probably send a separate e-mail that says “Sure.” in the subject line and might have quite a surprise in store for you come lunchtime :-).
Finally, what if for some reason I *want* to be able to have (EOM) at the end of a subject line as a meaningful part of subject line? Is there an escape sequence I can use? Also will GMail proccess “(EOM) ” on every incoming email reguardless of source? If G-Mail only uses this special flag on message creation though their interface (I hope it’s this way), then it’s probably not much of an issue. Otherwise, this could be a potential problem especially if, say, it doesn’t process in the message body because the subject line has “(EOM)” at the end which flags the end of a message.
As someone else mentioned in another post, I’d favor a preference setting that allowed you to choose not to be alerted when sending an email with an empty body. At least then it really is a “personal preference” and not making available a feature that some will just not use that may or may not cause technical issues. Optionally not displaying certain warnings is simple and shouldn’t raise an issue. Changing the logic to how mails process would be at least a little more complicated and has a greater probability of “breaking” something.
I get too many emails a day to read. I use the subject/sender to filter out what is important, and what is not. I may “star” a subject to read later (often never, but) but generally speaking I filter. I have thousands of unread emails, many I will never read. I read fewer emails that I get.
I wouldn’t say putting the subject in the subject is “rude”. If anything, the intention is to save people time. I’m not saying I do it myself, but I can understand the intent. People then don’t have to wait for a whole webpage to load in order to get the message.
If anything, I think it is not “rude” but perhaps annoying when people have non-descript subject lines. For example, at work, I get tons of emails from authors wanting similar things over and over. So I have to search through their email to find their manuscript number or have to open attachments to identify it. This is a nuisance, because it is very difficult to get through all the emails that come through when I’m wading through tons of unnecessary, unlabelled, often “no subject” or “status?” emails from people wanting to know when their manuscript will be published. It makes the whole process slower for everyone. Subject lines are extremely important and should be as detailed as possible so you can simply scroll your eyes through a ton of emails and identify those that you need.
If anything, if the message is short and sweet, and has to be sent by email, it should probably be written completely in the subject line and in the email.
Okay! What’s happening? Where did all these people come from? Did you try something new with this post? I didn’t realize that this was such a hot-button issue. (Congrats, I’m jealous of your new found popularity!)
I, too, am annoyed by “no body” emails. I have my work email set up in such a way that I look to see who the email is from and then view or delete. A lot of the time when a open an email with no body, I think I’m having a font issue.
Forgot to add, deaf people decided that ALL CAPS is shouting. Personally, I think ALL CAPS (and no caps at all) is lazy. Learn to use the shift key already.
EOM is great for those on a blackberry.
Wow what a lit firecracker you have here with this one.
Google has an embedded chat feature. For those that use gmail(and also AIM) you can send simple messages that way.
It’s a pet peeve of mine as well. Some days it is a waste to even look at my mail due to it all beng empty bodied.(I get around 10k email a day.).
Geez guys an opinion is just that, an opinion.
Seriously? I send a message to my husband about meeting me somewhere all the time. We want lunch and don’t have time to worry about a formal email. I’d get over it! There are more pressing issues than this!
Haha, jeez people are anal. I think the whole point that you are missing, dear poster, is that pet peeves are generally illogical. To say someone is ‘lazy’ because they don’t want to waste time making up a bullshit amount of text when they only need one sentence to describe what they are thinking is obviously anal and presumptuous. I think you take too much pride in how you use email, and therefore look down on other peoples methods of working. That makes you an asshole. Because the fact remains, the message got through, who cares?
That’s why we will win when you and the robots try to take over, us REAL humans aren’t bothered by syntax.
You call us lazy, I call you frivolous and boring.
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