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The world is divided into two kinds of people - those who know how to use the 'Subject:' line in an email and those who don't. The latter category consists of two sub-categories - those who leave it blank, and those who fit their entire message into the subject line (I guess such people are most comfortable with texting and tweeting), and enter nothing whatsoever in the main body of their email. I wonder what stops people from writing a succinct line that sums up what the mail is about and then writing out a brief message in the main body. Or in reverse order, if that works better for them. Perhaps some people just lack the ability to abstract the essence out of something, even if that something is a message they themselves have composed. 

In the world of telephony, these tendencies play out almost exactly the same way, "translating" the inability to define a subject from text to speech, as it were. There are those who know how to leave a crisp voice mail message, and those who don't. Under the latter, again, two sub-categories - those who get to the voice mail beep, say nothing (sometimes you can hear them wheeze or breathe heavily under the tension of having to say or do something) and then hang up, and those who, after a pause, manage to overcome their "speaker's block" with a hesitant "er... er.... hi this is so-and-so, I wanted to talk to you about something, please call back". Talk to you about something. No clues as to whether it is urgent or can wait till the next day or the next week. No clue as to whether its something about you or something about them or someone else. No clues as to whether its good news or bad news. No clues as to whether they want to give or to take. Go figure!

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