This is the genealogical equivalent of placing an ad in the newspaper's classified section that says, "Used car for sale. Please call for make, model, condition, and asking price." You might get a response, but don't count on it. See the improved example below for better wording.

This message is no more informative than the first example.

If you're just starting to research your own family, contacting everyone with that name will soon overwhelm you, and isn't likely to help you find your immediate ancestry. Even if you think your name is extremely rare, there are probably lots of people that share it with you.

If you really are interested in making a comprehensive collection of all the Zahms, tell us enough about your project to encourage other genealogists to contribute their research, as shown in the improved example, next section.

A little bit better than the above examples, but you have valuable clues that you're not sharing with us.

Your grandfather died when you were 10. This gives you the date of his death. But remember, by Internet, we have no idea if your age is closer to 15 or to 95. We have to guess grandpa died someplace between 5 and 85 years ago. Since most men have children between the ages of 20 and 50, we can guess that he was probably between 50 and 110 years old when he died. He might have been born anywhere from 55 to 195 years ago!

So tell us his name, tell us the year he died, and make an estimate of his age so we can tell about when he was born, as in the improved example later on.

This query gives a cluttered opening line that's hard to understand. Use a separate article for each surname, and give us more details, as in example 1. Thousands of people will look at your first line to decide whether to read the message - make it count. Take the time to tell something about your research and your questions - and put it in a readable format so readers will want to help you.