There are two common email conventions in my world that I use many times a day in Gmail. I don’t remember where either of them came from or how much I influenced their use in my little corner of the world, but I see them everywhere now.
The first is +Name. When I add someone to an email thread, I start the email with +Name. For example:
+Mary
Gang – happy to have a meeting. Mary will take care of scheduling it.
Now, why in the world can’t gmail recognize that and automatically add Mary to my To: line? If I needed to do “+Mary Weingartner”, that would be fine. Gmail is supposed to be super smart – it should know my address book (ahem) or even my most recently added Mary’s and just get it done.
The other is bcc: Whenever I want to drop someone from an email chain, I say “to bcc:” For example:
Joe – thanks for the intro. To bcc:
Pauline – tell me more about what you are thinking.
Then, I have to click and drag on some stuff in the address field to move Joe from the To: line to the bcc: line.
Dear Developers Working On Email Clients Of The World: Would you please put a little effort into having the email client either (a) learn my behavior or (b) Add in lots of little tricks that are common, but not standard, conventions?