SiteFunny subject line story (or why editors don’t respond to hot teen party e-mails)
This Monday I turned some assigned recipes to one of my editors. For some reason she couldn’t open up the file, so she asked me to send it again with the copy pasted into the body of my e-mail, which I did with a note asking her to confirm receipt. Later I sent her the accompanying article. Just as I was about to hit send, I looked at my subject line, which included the words “teen” and “party.” Whoops. Had the teen-friendly party fare recipes I’d sent earlier got stuck in her spam filter? I changed the header to something less spammy and inquired.
Sure enough, she hadn’t received my earlier e-mail. She went through her spam filter and found my recipes nestled among the v*i&a%g(r@ offerings and pleas from orphaned Nigerian millionaires.
Have you ever innocently sent an e-mail, only to notice later you’d titled it with a skeevy subject line? Linda has a funny story about one of her pitch e-mails … maybe she’ll share! Tell us your story in the comments section below. [db]
4 Responses to “Funny subject line story (or why editors don’t respond to hot teen party e-mails)”
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JustinS
Said this on May 14th, 2008 at 10:51am:Maybe not in the subject line, but I sure as hell know better than to put “Magna Cum Laude” on my resume any more…
LindaFormichelli
Said this on May 14th, 2008 at 10:53am:Yes! I typically send e-mailed queries with the subject line “Query: Title: Linda Formichelli.” Well, when I had a pitch about smell snafus (B.O., stinky feet, etc.), my subject line — I noticed just as it flashed off my screen — was “Query: What’s That Smell? Linda Formichelli.”
It sold to Women’s Health!
wordwych
Said this on May 14th, 2008 at 5:26pm:Ah, the beloved spam filter! A couple years ago, I had a similar situation with my editor. We were swapping e-mails about a source whose last name was C**kerman (insert OC for the asterisks). Well, at least, I was sending e-mails. My newspaper editor’s spam-eater was pouncing on every one as obscene. She kept sending me increasingly anxious “What’s going on with this article?” messages and venting about my ISP (I work from home, and yes, my ISP can be a royal pain in the backside, but in this case, it wasn’t my ISP’s fault). It was an embarrassing moment when she checked her spam/obscene mail folder and found ton ‘o messages from me and a bunch of other people.
Parental control filters on computers can be fun, too. Another editor was working from home, where she has two teen daughters. She called to ask me if something was wrong with my camera, as the photos she was getting had these terrible splotches and blotches all over them. We finally figured out that her parental control program was obliterating any skin or flesh anywhere but on faces on the assumption that the photos were - ahem - of the naughty variety. The photos were from a summer church picnic! We referred to those as “The Presbyterian P*rno” — in-house, of course.
“Query: What’s That Smell? Linda Formichelli.” - Thanks for the laugh! I once sent in a list of tips I’d collected from the sheriff’s department on educating parents about ‘Stranger Danger.’ What did I call it? “How to Keep Your Kids Safe from the Guilford County Sheriff’s Department.” It didn’t even strike me until my editor called and, through her laughter, said, ‘Pull up that document you just sent me.’ The instant I saw the title, I wanted to dive under my desk! We giggled and snorted about that for a week!
Harmony
Said this on May 14th, 2008 at 5:34pm:Yes, I found the perfect source for an article I was writing and no matter how I changed the wording my e-mail got bounced back by a very unforgiving spam filter. I ended up calling her the next day instead.