Unsolicited Life Advice: Always use a meaningful title

[jack]

So, you're writing an email. Or committing a change to your program into the source control system. Or writing a blog post. Or editing a wiki. Or writing an academic paper. Or writing an article for a magazine[1]. Or, especially, you are including a hyperlink to another website.

This advice comes from someone who's been there. Don't mess around. GIVE IT A MEANINGFUL TITLE.

You'll think "oh, it's obvious what it is, it doesn't matter". But no. The vast majority of the time, if you ever revisit something you wrote a time ago, or if anyone else ever tries to read it, having a vaguely relevant title WILL MAKE LIFE 10,000 TIMES EASIER. Even if it's not useful the first time, I often find myself, for whatever reason, seeing a list of titles later, and if it's at least a little unique, it'll remind me later which is which.

It doesn't even matter if you can't encapsulate the whole thing, a title like "Links: flash version of xkcd U-shaped tetris and other links" is fine. But "links" is a bit useless if for some reason you later end up looking through old posts for a particular link you made.

It's also perfectly fine to add a joke title as well, but think about why you're doing it before you use an ironic title ONLY. If you intend the title ever to be useful, "Fixed stupid typo. Me undumbed meself!" is less useful than "Fixed stupid typo corrupting variable xxxx. Me undumbed meself!" If you're trying to capture people's interest and they haven't figured out the trick yet, or they don't read headlines anyway, using a cutesy joke title is useful to draw them in, but remember it may be less useful for other people.

Of course, it's entirely up to you. Many people never DO try to look back over any sort of history, and primarily email friends where all the content IS equally interesting, in which case you don't need this advice[2]. I'm just saying, it was useful FOR ME, and consider whether it would be useful to you, don't shy away from informative titles just because.

Specifically, I, and I think many other people, are often shy about putting a relevant title. They feel it'll seem boring or redundant. FWIW, I don't think anyone ever minds: a useful title is at worst neutral, I think it's never harmful.

[1] Except that in this case, it probably won't be under your control.
[2] A particular example is posting links to "this seems cool!" I find it incredibly useful if the link says WHICH flash game or WHICH parody article it is, but that's partly because of the way I browse, I know other people apparently don't.

Comments

[pseudomonas]

Since I use Google Mail, which is nicely searchable for content, I find doing things like making sure I say "Pat's phone number is 01223 123 123" rather than "Pat: 01223123123", which I'll never be able to find again, helps.

[redbird]

This makes sense to me. Then again, I just don't click on unidentified YouTube links: the ones that just say "here's a cool video." (I don't mind someone saying "Cool leaping penguins" instead of "leaping penguins" if they want to emphasize that it's good.)

Having said that, I have one long-running email exchange labeled as "Part one" and "Part 2" because my correspondent's software didn't like how long things had gotten, and another that I think is currently lurking under "just checking," a subject line that made sense on a message sent in 2009. But that sort of correspondence feels different from telling someone specific, or asking about an event, or such.

When I'm doing wiki editing, I usually explain what I did, but "fixed typo" and checking the "minor changes" box seems sufficient if it's one misspelled word or an omitted "the."

[jack]

Oh yes, definitely agree.

[jack]

I just don't click on unidentified YouTube links: the ones that just say "here's a cool video

I often don't bother with videos. I find them a small hassle to watch, so I generally don't bother unless the link convinces me I specifically want to. But I have a similar problem with funny cartoons, flash games etc: I'd actually like to see most of them, and find it annoying to have to click on each one to see if "truth behind apple ipad" link is referring to a cartoon I've already seen about the ipad, or a different one. (I realise one doesn't want to spoil the joke, but I think you can normally, if not always, give some idea without explaining the joke.)

one long-running email exchange labeled as "Part one" and "Part 2"

I agree with you here. Some email I exchange with Rachel has a specific topic. But a lot of it is just "more chat on the same topics and some new stuff", where a title actually doesn't help, because I've a very good idea of the sorts of things in our emails, and will always end up text-searching them for whatever topic I need anyway.

"fixed typo" and checking the "minor changes" box seems sufficient if it's one misspelled word or an omitted "the."

Totally agreed. That almost certainly IS what someone looking later will need to know, that it didn't change the major meaning anywhere, and that's all.

[liv]

Thing is, guess how I learned how to deal with long ongoing correspondence as opposed to a ping-pong exchange of mails on a particular topic? From your sweetie and my ex, who in turn had been corresponding with said sweetie for sometime before he met me. So now I'm passing that meme on to jack, it's really quite impressively unsurprising that you, he and I agree about the exceptions to the titles rule.