[masraum]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

I'm assuming he's on the younger side.

When using group oriented messaging solutions like Slack, Teams, Discord, etc... It is common to @ specific individuals so they get a notification that there is something in the thread directly related to them or is something they need to pay attention to.

It may just be habit that he is transferring to email where the only purpose it serves is to make it clear the content is specific to or requires response / action from Tom Smith.

Exactly. I've never seen it used in email. I'll test it at work to see if our email has that sort of functionality.