> I attempted to set up a topic entitled "Referral".
> What I wanted to do was to set up all members to receive the
> topic and allow those uninterested to deselect it. It worked only
> as long as the word Referral was the only item in the Subject
> Field. This rendered the topic useless. I would like listmembers
> to be able to post, for example, Referral needed in Boston.

Then a properly formatted subject would have to look like this:

Subject: Referral: Referral needed in Boston.

> On another list, to which I subscribe topics are followed by the
> following symbols :>

With Listserv it's only :   as shown above which the user must insert.

> I attempted to include those in my
> configuration but they were rejected as invalid. So, is there a
> way to set up topics so that the word "Referral" can be
> deselected by listmembers with no interest in referrals, and yet
> be followed by enough information to orient members who are?

Yes, read:
http://www.lsoft.com/manuals/1.8d/owner/appendb.html#keyTopics