I recently received a message from a manager in a hi-tech corporation who had applied a technique I’ve never seen before to the matter of removing unnecessary people from dist lists. The context is that I was corresponding with his boss, who delegated to my current sender; and the latter decided to drop the boss from the continuing exchange, removing him from the addressee list. So far so good, rare but not unheard of.

The twist was that at the start of the email this guy had put in the line

(Removing Joe from the thread)

Not only had he taken the sensible action of dropping Joe, reducing the latter’s Inbox clutter; but he’d taken the trouble to make sure I realized he’d done so. He was considerate of Joe and of myself, and acting with a degree of reason that is seldom associated with addressing email messages.

Take note, y’all!