Let's start right at the top by looking at the subject line. First of all, you should always write a subject line. Although we've all sent emails without a subject line, making this part of your final check before hitting send should help you avoid this mistake. Actually, it's a good idea to write the subject line before you write the email, that way you'll never forget. When you check your inbox, although you might look at the name of the sender, you'll also look at the subject line. This will tell you what the email is about and help you decide whether you'll open it.

This means that the subject line should be specific to the topic and not vague. If you see the subject line help, you'll know the sender wants help, but help with what? Pro sure production help is much more specific. Sometimes, if you're responding to an email and the topic of your email is different, it's a good idea to change the subject line that matches your new topic. Usually, this happens with internal emails among a group of people. Look at some vague subject lines and see how we can change them to be more specific.

Another guideline is that the subject line should not be too long. These days, a lot of people check their email on their phones and only about 25 characters of the subject line are usually visible. This means that we don't usually write sentences, but use short, noun phrases instead. How do you think we can improve this subject line? Did you notice that we took out the verb, pronoun, and the article, the?

Actually, we can make this subject line better. It's a good idea to put the most important word first, so let's see what happens. Did you notice that by changing the order, we also took out two prepositions, so we made the subject line even shorter? Putting the most important words first also helps if the reader wants to find the email again because the topic of the new retail store is more specific than update.

There are just a couple of things about style that are important. First, make sure that you capitalize the first word in the subject line. You can also capitalize the other words, but it's not necessary. We usually don't capitalize prepositions or articles like the or an. Don't use all uppercase. This means that you're shouting and can make the reader angry or not want to open the email.

And finally, try to avoid starting the message in the subject line and finishing it in the body of the email. You make the reader have to open the email and it can be annoying. Let's do a quiz to review what we've learned about subject lines.