If there is one thing which has changed our lives in a big way it is the email facility which has made our lives easier for we can send and receive information in a few seconds. While many have benefited with email facility, one can derive much more benefits with the existing facilities should they follow some discipline.

Users of email have always followed different patterns depending on their personalities.  The perfectionists have always paid importance on grammar, spellings and use of perfect paragraphs much like a letter which used to be typewritten prior to advent of email.  The busy people have always preferred speed over perfection without even being bothered to do a spell check.  There are still a lazy few who have paid importance to beautification by way of fonts and invariably one finds that most of their messages lie in the draft folder than in the sent folder.  While users have chosen different patterns of sending mails there is one thing which many ignore and that is wording of the subject. Subject is one of the most important things and there are some dos and don'ts to be followed and here are some of them:-

1. Never reply to a junk mail especially if you are a relative of the sender:- At workplaces most of us forward junk messages to our colleagues, friends and  relatives.  There are some colleagues who do a simple reply with history on the message saying "good one" or "nice one" which is perfectly acceptable.  Many people especially those who get lot of mails do not bother to open the mail assuming it is a complimentary message saying thanks or a good one.  However the problem is there are people especially relatives who reply on the same message and without changing the subject "how or you" or how are your parents or children or sometimes may be something more important and here lies the problem as many people do not open the mail and I for once had erred because I did not open a mail of my relative assuming it to be a complimentary message.  Through this article I request all not convey hi or a hello through a reply to option on a junk mail because the chances of the mail being opened are rare and it is a perfect invitation for understandings. 

Another problem related to replying on a junk message is that it occupies more space as junk messages usually have huge attachments.  Even if a person opens the mail he would not like to store it because it occupies space.  The person would be overwhelmed by the warmth of the message and the sender but would not be in a position to store the message.  It is therefore suggested that all his or hellos are sent through new memos because those are read and stored as well because it occupies lesser space.

2. Put important details in subject especially in subjects:- If you are sending a mail to a customer asking for a payment against a particular project, please make sure that you enter the payment amount and project name in subject column itself.  On a busy day it becomes easier for the recipient to take action on your mail as he would give preference to a mail on a matter which is known even before opening the mail rather than spend time on others mails where the matter is not known without opening the mail.

3. Change subject wherever required:- You might have received a mail from a customer enquiring about prices with a subject called "Rate Enquiry" and the normal procedure is that you do a reply with history to the mail and quote the prices without changing the subject.  At a later stage when you need the customers address to process the order, you can do a reply with  history on the same mail as usual but by changing the subject to "Address Details Required"  There are many who do not bother to change the subject even though the matter has changed and as a result of that their mails are not read.

4.Ask for return receipts only if required:- At workplaces users have a option of a acknowledgement to their mails i.e. whenever the recipient opens the sent mail the sender gets a automatic acknowledgement from the recipient.  The facility is extremely useful as there are lot of recipients who deny receiving the mail.  However there are also people who mark a return return for every mail including junk mails like jokes.  Imagine a situation a person sends a junk mail to around 50 people and his inbox is flooded with 50 return return receipts.  The 50 return receipts he gets means that his main mails gets hidden in the middle of return receipts and may miss out on reading some important mails.  Apart from the sender has to delete all those return receipts which would mean wasting a few minutes on deletion of those mails.

5. Use reply with history option only if it is mandatory:- There are people who keep on replying with history endlessly even after the subject has changed and as a result of which mailbox becomes full.  The more times you reply on the same message the size of the message becomes bigger and hence difficult to open especially if the connectivity is poor. Please use new memo option if the subject has changed as it helps in opening the mail faster and in storing it among archived mails.

6.Delete all reply with history messages except the last one:- If there are 20 mails with reply with history then retain the last one and delete everything else.  When you get all the information in a single message there is no point in retaining around 20 odd mails which has the same content and one. This also helps in making the search faster if you have thousands of archived mails.

The above mentioned tips if followed could save lot of us time for ourselves and to the recipient of our mails. Always remember one thing it is the subject which counts most in the chances of your mail being read or ignored.