Choosing Good Subject Lines [Periodic Posting]
Dean Roehrich
NAME
subject_lines - Choosing Good Subject Lines
DESCRIPTION
The quality of your article's subject line will dictate the
quality of the responses you receive. Choose your subject
lines wisely.
GOOD SUBJECT LINES
These subject lines indicate exactly what the article will
be about and are therefore quality subject lines.
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BAD SUBJECT LINES
These subject lines say nothing about the content in the
article.
Where do I start???!! :-(
How hard would this job be?
Can YOU solve this simple problem?!
Testing.
04]?
Simple split question
These subject lines use negative-flash words. See the
section on NEGATIVE-FLASH WORDS.
Perl newbie with cgi script problem
Newbie needs help
Total Beginner Reqs. Help - Please.
Simple split question
Can YOU solve this simple problem?!
NO SUBJECT LINE
Many of the people who give high-quality responses will tend
to ignore posts which have no subject line at all.
NEGATIVE-FLASH WORDS
The following words are guaranteed to make large numbers of
people deliberately ignore your article. I call these
negative-flash words.
beginner Many people ignore articles which have these words
in their subject lines.
emergency News propagation is too slow. By the time anyone
gets to read it your condition has probably been
upgraded to catastrophic. By the time you get
their response you'll be dead. Don't waste other
people's time with this stuff.
expert See guru.
girl The people who can give you the highest-quality
responses probably aren't in the mood for this
sort of trolling.
guru The truth is that it's probably a non-guru
question. Most gurus will ignore any article that
has this word in its subject line.
help It sounds like you've given up, or, more likely,
haven't tried. Omit this word and the rest of
your subject line will probably be a high-quality
attention-getter.
newbie See beginner.
novice See beginner.
please Don't beg. It's a turn-off.
question It's too obvious, and probably answered in the
manpages or the FAQ.
sex See girl.
simple This word should tell you something--that you need
to look at the manpages a little harder. Don't
waste other people's time with this stuff.
stupid It's just plain derogatory. People don't like to
waste their time on things that are stupid. Hint:
don't tell them it's stupid, and you will get a
higher-quality response.
urgent See emergency.
woman See girl.
NEGATIVE-FLASH EFFECTS
The following effects, like the above list of negative-flash
words, are guaranteed to make large numbers of people
deliberately ignore your article.
ALL CAPITALS
Do not use all capital letters in your subject
line. Many people find the effect annoying or
equate it with newcomers. In either case they
will ignore the posting. Hint: There's nothing
wrong with being a newcomer--we all were at one
time--just don't advertise it.
Multiple bangs!!!!!
Multiple bangs (exclamation points) and multiple
question marks come across as either over-zealous
or literarily ignorant, and both effects tend to
chase away the people who can give the highest-
quality responses.
BAD, BARELY
This brings us to the next category of subject lines: Those
which are bad but could be good with only a slight
adjustment.
HELP: Perl 5.002, SunOS 5.5, gcc 2.7.2, dynamic loading
HELP: Converting text to binary
GRINCH
Dean Roehrich, July 26, 1996.