The reason is to work around an Outlook Express 'feature'.

 From http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=245199
To prevent subjects from being cluttered with unnecessary text when a
message is forwarded or replied to multiple times, Outlook Express
removes text in the subject that contains from one to four characters
and is followed by a colon (for example, "Fw:", "Re:", or "Read:").
Earlier versions of Outlook Express remove only strings of from one to
three characters. With the introduction of read receipts (which contain
"Read:" in the subject), the string length was increased to four characters.


However, I believe there are interactions with the braces which prevent
outlook from removing the colon and preceding characters when inside the
brace (can't find any hard documentation on that, though).

But in the end, I simply subscribe to the full piclist feed, filter by
[PIC, [EE, [OT, and put the colon inside the bracket when composing
messages (or replying to broken messages) and it pretty much takes care
of the problems for me.

-Adam

llile@SALTONUSA.COM wrote:

>When did we start putting the colon inside the bracket?  Looks like
>everyone is doing it both ways now.  I clearly remember being beat with a
>wet noodle for not having colon outside the bracket, back when our poor
>overworked and underpaid admins had enough time to yell about such things.
>
>
>I would check the original source, www.piclist.com, but it won't load just
>now
>
>-- Lawrence Lile
>
>
>
>
>
>Russell McMahon <apptech@PARADISE.NET.NZ>
>Sent by: pic microcontroller discussion list <PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
>05/17/2004 06:47 PM
>Please respond to pic microcontroller discussion list
>
>
>        To:     PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
>        cc:
>        Subject:        Re: [EE]: Light bulb make square to sine wave
>
>
>
>
>>1. Notice that I put a topic tag [EE]: in the subject of the email.
>>
>>
>
>But it should have been [EE:]     :-)
>Colon is meant to be inside bracket.
>Holy war ensues ....
>
>
>
>> These wierd tags are used by some PIClisters to sort out some of the
>>
>>
>noise on
>
>
>>the PIClist.
>>
>>
>
>True. But they are used by ALL PICListers who want most people to see
>their
>messages.
>If you use no tag then only people who accept all mail (as I do) will see
>them. People who have settings set to accept eg only [PIC:] and [EE:] will
>not see untagged messages.
>(Or, at least, that's what they tell me. As i see them all I can't be sure
>this is actually true).
>
>
>        Russell McMahon
>
>--
>http://www.piclist.com hint: The list server can filter out subtopics
>(like ads or off topics) for you. See http://www.piclist.com/#topics
>
>
>
>--
>http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
>ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.
>
>
>
>
>

--
http://www.piclist.com hint: The PICList is archived three different
ways.  See http://www.piclist.com/#archives for details.