[Usability] Mail clients put the Subject field in the wrong place

[Matthew Thomas <mpt myrealbox com>]

On 15 Sep, 2005, at 11:39 PM, Alan Horkan wrote:
> Please, please, please use the subject line.*
>
> It is a big help if people summarise what they are trying to say in the
> subject line.  Better questions get a better response and people are 
> more likely to put a little extra time and effort into their reply if 
> the question is thoughtful and shows some effort has been made to
> answer their own question.
> ...

Hynek was using Evolution, a mail client that -- like most mail clients 
-- puts the Subject field above the message body in the composition 
window. As long as mail clients do that, and as long as humans go 
through forms top-to-bottom, it won't be surprising that they usually 
don't use the Subject line to summarize a message that they haven't 
even written yet. As a result, e-mail recipients worldwide will keep 
suffering Subject lines of the form "Re: something" and "(no subject)".

--
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/