A discussion is ongoing about the tooltip for the envelope icon in personal messages. The current tooltip, “This topic is a personal message,” doesn’t indicate that clicking the icon takes users to their Inbox. RichardC suggests changing the default text to “Go to Inbox” or something similar. However, awesomerobot questions the necessity of the link. codinghorror and others (jomaxro, RichardC, tobiaseigen) use the feature frequently and argue for its retention. To make the link’s purpose more obvious, codinghorror proposes styling it as a button, which RichardC agrees with.
There is an envelope icon to the left of personal message titles with the tooltip:
"This topic is a personal message"
That’s somewhat informative, but it totally hides the more important fact that clicking on the envelope takes you to your Inbox
You can change that message at: Customize / Text / js.topic_statuses.personal_message.title
But it might be preferable if the default were already “Go to Inbox” or something similar
I wonder if it’s worth having the link there at all? It’s a bit of an oddball ninja navigation feature.
I use it all the time though! why-not-both-girl.gif
This topic is a personal message (select to go to your inbox)
I click the envelope frequently too. If we remove the link from it, we need to add some other way to “go to inbox”. A 
button perhaps?
I definitely would like a button, and it would help if it were more obvious what it does.
Sure, maybe it should be styled as a button? I’m not sure. What do you think @awesomerobot ?
I also use this all the time to find my way back to the inbox. I like the idea of making this link back more obvious.