Email chains often outlive their initial purpose. Because it’s easier to just keep hitting “Reply” instead of starting a brand new email, what began as a discussion that’s strictly business can morph into a discussion of weekend plans or a referral to a dentist. As long as you stay within the bounds of your company’s email policy, there’s really nothing wrong with that. Still, it can be very helpful to take a second to indicate that the topic under discussion has changed by creating a new subject line. This is especially true if one work topic has branched off into another-- changing the subject line can help you indicate that what you have to say now has new relevance and isn’t just one more volley in what may otherwise look like a tired old topic. An even better idea is to go that extra mile and start a clean email that isn’t dragging along all that baggage of the old subject line and the text of previous messages. In addition to just being a tidier way of communicating, this can save you all sorts of trouble and embarrassment in the event that your email gets forwarded along to others who you never intended to see it.
Some people seem to use the collection of old email in their inbox as a substitute for an address book, searching for an old message that they can reply to rather than entering an address in a new message. This is why every now and then you’ll get a reply to your two year old Christmas invitation in June that turns out to be a question about a completely unrelated topic. Don’t be one of those people. Take the time to show that your message is important enough to read by starting a fresh new email with a subject line of it’s own.
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