Re: on writing subject lines

From	Julieta Shem <jshem@yaxenu.org>
Newsgroups	comp.lang.c, comp.misc
Subject	Re: on writing subject lines
Date	2023-12-04 20:34 -0300
Organization	A noiseless patient Spider
Message-ID	<87y1e9sfss.fsf@yaxenu.org> (permalink)
References	(3 earlier) <uddvnt$3a9si$1@dont-email.me> <ude6v5$3av40$2@dont-email.me> <fVDKthnhfJ8657wgg@bongo-ra.co> <87v89fwa07.fsf_-_@yaxenu.org> <ukirvh$30u5h$5@dont-email.me>

Cross-posted to 2 groups.

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Vir Campestris <vir.campestris@invalid.invalid> writes:

> On 03/12/2023 16:01, Julieta Shem wrote:
>> One difficulty there is that a good subject requires a summary of the
>> content, a hard problem that schools have been failing to solve.
>> Notice, too, that lay people write the subject first and the message,
>> second, which is roughly the same as writing out the number first and
>> doing the arithmetic later.
>>
>> So we can sort of blame that partly on the user interfaces.  Somehow,
>> the subject line should come as a last step.  That might be one of
>> the reasons lay people love the new proprietary software for
>> conversations --- they don't ask them to solve hard problems.  On the
>> contrary: they force them not to solve them.  (You don't have much to
>> say?  No problem: we won't let you write more than n characters
>> anyway.)
>
> The problem there is that when you are reading the message you want
> the title (summary) first.

Can we untie the way it is displayed from the way it is written?

> It's quite valid to say you should write it later - but that would
> result in a different layout for reading and writing, which would be 
> confusing.

Why?  It seems more confusing to have to write it first --- ``omg, I
need a subject, what do I put in there?''  If I can't decide, that's the
very definition of confusion.

> For me having the title first works most of the time. It's a one line
> summary of what I want to talk about. I then expand on it in the
> body. Occasionally I go back and change the title - but not often.

So true.  More often than not now, I write it last.  I've probably
rewritten it so many times now that I perhaps learned that it's less
work to write it last.

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