Single-subject misrule

Colorado and many other states have a "single-subject rule" stating that a bill or ballot proposal can only deal with one subject. It's a good effort to focus the mind, even if it does make it hard to write a law that attempts to prescribe both a cause and an effect (e.g., when a new tax is proposed to fund a specific expenditure).

Lately I've detected the existence of a new, unwritten single-subject rule: An e-mail may only deal with one subject. This has probably always been a good idea in a business setting; a rambling memo gives the recipient too many opportunities to shirk the areas s/he doesn't wish to deal with.

Even in personal messages, however, there now seems to be an increasing unwillingness or inability to follow along as the writer moves from one topic to another. For example, if you send somebody an e-mail asking, "How are you? Want to have lunch?" you will find out how the person is but not whether s/he wants to have lunch. If you were to write "Want to have lunch? How are you?" the reply will be about lunch and only lunch.

It's ironic that in an environment that practically mandates multitasking, taking two sentences (or, heaven forbid, two paragraphs) to express two thoughts is a vanishing skill.