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Composing better emails
- mikekchar 7y agoAnyone who has read any of my posts here knows that I suffer from an inability to speak concisely. I feel I have a talent for being able to get my message across clearly and this has helped me a lot at work. However, I have trouble keeping the message size small enough so that most people will read to the end. Does anyone have any advice for improving on this front?
- stctw 7y agoRephrase, simplify, eliminate. For example, your comment could be written as: > Frequent readers here know I write verbosely. I communicate clearly, but few people finish reading my messages. Any advice? William Zinsser's book, On Writing Well, covers this topic. I recommend it.
- rhymenoceros 7y agoJudicious editing. I think the Blaise Pascal quote about not having the time is relevant; making things concise takes more effort, particularly if you are not already in the habit of doing so already. Start with your communication, remove redundant or unnecessary words, then think about ways to compact things down even further by removing or rephrasing sentences. Going through "Elements of Style" by Strunk & White wouldn't hurt too.
- sleepychu 7y ago> remove redundant or unnecessary words Made me chuckle.
- rhymenoceros 7y agoHah! Both words have (slightly) different meanings, but yeah, I ironically didn't follow my own advice :-)
- webignition 7y agoI think your message asking for such advice is itself of a suitable length where the problem is clearly stated without deviation or distraction. Taking your message on it's own, you have the ability to keep the message size small. Keep to the point, avoid distraction, stay focused, replace three words with two where two will suffice, replace two words with one where fitting. Omit needless words, make each word count.
- probablypower 7y agoIt is likely that you provide more context than necessary. For example, you could've asked: "My emails tend to be too long. Does anyone have tips on writing concise emails?" Obviously your post was not an email, so the additional, narrative context you provided is welcome. In emails you should aim to provide just the key info, and to elaborate on any context in other forms of communication/documentation. I typically try to aim for just 2 lines of content. One is a statement of fact or a problem, the other is a question or a 'call to action'. I break this rule often, but I always pause to think if there is really a good reason to stray from that rule or if I'm just ranting/chatting. Often if people want context they'll come find you or call you.
- __jf__ 7y agoYes, write short. This is the title of one of the chapters in “Writing without bullshit”, hilariously followed by the first paragraph: “Use fewer words”. Other tips from the book: * Edit everything * Aim for a word count * Say what you really mean * Start boldly * Organize relentlessly * Prune sections and arguments * Use bullets or tables * Use graphics * Trim connective tissue * Delete weasel-words and qualifiers
- DonHopkins 7y agoWilliam Strunk would shout to his class: "Omit needless words! Omit needless words! Omit needless words!" https://www.brusselslegal.com/article/display/2563/Tip_2_Omit_needless_words https://www.brusselslegal.com/article/display/2563/Tip_2_Omi... https://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk5.html#13 https://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk5.html#13
- jaclaz 7y agoUmberto Eco would have added ;-): 13. Don't be repetitious; don't repeat the same thing twice; repeating is superfluous (redundancy means the useless explanation of something the reader has already understood). http://gioclairval.blogspot.com/2010/02/umberto-ecos-rules-for-writing-well.html http://gioclairval.blogspot.com/2010/02/umberto-ecos-rules-f...
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- amelius 7y agoPerhaps use an email client that has a Twitter-like limit on message length :)
- splittingTimes 7y agoAdditionally to the tips from the story, this guide might further help you to focus the content of your mails and the delivery of the important message. It certainly help me. https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-precision https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-pre...
- fanf2 7y agoPut all the important points right at the start: bottom line up front “bluf”. Explicitly mark the point where your message becomes background detail, so people can stop reading there.
- ysavir 7y ago* Practice writing more concise emails. Especially if it's an email you already sent out. Ask yourself if the email had the intended effect, and what changes you could have made to better reach/improve that effect. * Look at the emails you receive that you feel do a good job of being concise. What do they have in common? What do you do differently from those emails? Start applying those differences when you write emails. * Look at the emails you receive that you feel don't do a good job of being concise, or are confusing otherwise (perhaps they're too concise). Open the email in an editor and make changes until you eliminate the problem areas. Can you make similar changes in your own emails? As a more concrete example, I originally had this text in the above paragraph: > Open the email in an editor and make the changes you would want to see until you see the email you wished you received I then revised it to: > Open the email in an editor and make changes until you eliminate the problem areas. In this and other cases, messages can be improved with better handling of the sentence's subject(s), tense, etc.
- magicalhippo 7y agoMy approach: When reading what you've written, find the core of what you're really trying to say. Find the sentence or couple of sentences that conveys this core. Then see if the other sentences are really needed, removing those that aren't, tweaking the core as you go along. Repeat until you feel it can no longer be distilled further.
- cs02rm0 7y agoTL;DR Use HTML features (and dates). Yes, it's 2019 and I'm still in favour of plaintext emails. Sorry.
- vbsteven 7y agoAdding links and plaintext emails are not mutually exclusive. Hackernews comments are a great example where commenters often embed a [1] tag in their comment and at the end of the comment have a section like [1] https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com
- cs02rm0 7y agoNone of the HTML features the author uses lack a plaintext equivalent.
- vbsteven 7y agoI disagree. We've been doing this for decades on mailinglists # example heading You can add emphasis with asterisk or _underscores_. Links can be done with [1] tags And as an alternative, nothing stops you from using Markdown syntax in plaintext emails for adding structure like (nested) bullet lists. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com
- 0xffff2 7y agoI think you misread the comment you're responding to, and are therefore agreeing.
- petepete 7y agoMe too. This is exactly the area where something like Markdown should have flourished. At worst it looks like plain text with a few _ and * characters sprinkled around, it has beautiful clean HTML output and some terminals support italic and bold fonts; win/win/win. Pity that boat has long since sailed.
- arendtio 7y ago
- mxcrossb 7y agoThose are some nice tips, but I have to question the use of bold font, it seems to come off as too aggressive.
- Sverigevader 7y agoI agree and I've been using italic instead of bold font for this reason. It's like you're whispering something which makes people listen more intently and hopefully read more intently.
- Complexicate 7y agoI have never read italics as whispering. I usually read it as emphasis or stress. I read ALL CAPS as shouting. I read bold as important. I only see bold as aggressive if emotionally charged language is bolded (ie: marked as important by the writer). I find it interesting that others may still perceive these differently than either of us.
- mirekrusin 7y agoIt's very strange to me that some people actually don't like bold text to emphasize relevant parts. It's the easiest way to aid speed reading/allowing mental prose-to-bullet point conversion. For me it's a sign of respect for time of the reader who is likely overwhelmed with information and wants to focus on the most important parts. I've written some technical documents this way. In one company I got explicit email that this helped a lot and was great idea. Implementation that followed went smoothly. In other company it has been seen as silly, all emphasis was removed, bullet points expanded to prose, useless brochure like logos/typography added - of course I'm biased but this document stands in my head as the shittiest/least useful/confusing/verbose documents I had to deal with. I think to really appreciate this approach you'd have to test it yourself on 50 page document and discover how fast you can digest 80% of information included. Likely practicing speed reading will help to appreciate it more. It's a bit like medium highlights - but it's designed by the author, it can be really, really useful, but it's niche and very rare to see unfortunately.
- 7y ago
- DonHopkins 7y agoI like his recommendation to attach cat pictures to the Post Scriptum of every message.
- edejong 7y agoPersonally I was hoping the cat-picture-meme would be a passing thing. I am allergic to the little critters and am not particularly fond of them. They carry parasites and bacteria which can be permanently harmful for us. So, although I respect people wanting to have their own pets and take care of them, I (and many others) think it is tasteless to project this affinity to others in a professional setting.
- 0xffff2 7y agoAlthough I vehemently disagree with you about cats, I feel pretty much the same way about the stupid dog gifs that my boss insists on putting at the top of our monthly report drafts, so I can see where you're coming from. The thing is, it's not an actual cat/dog. It's not going to get dander or slobber or parasites on you. I just scroll past and forget about it.
- cowb0yl0gic 7y ago"Lazarus Lazaridis' personal blog with posts mostly related to programming and opensource. And cats." I agree completely that "cutesy" things don't belong in professional contexts (I like to make sensible exceptions occasionally to reassure everyone that I am, in fact, human), but these are his critters, so he is entitled to subject his readers to them (just like someone who posts pictures of their happy-smiley family). Also, you should be more concerned about humans, who carry parasites and bacteria (and viruses!) which are vastly more dangerous to you. :)
- tumetab1 7y agoI would also add "promote the most important message to the first sentence/paragraph". Rewriting the first example: Hello all, Please check and revise the priority of Redmine issue (#455) that I have created. I noticed that there are many logs for blabla the last few days and I don't think that it is normal. I believe the problem is the updated version of gem blabla. Feel free to change its priority in case blabla. Thanks, Lazarus
- PuffinBlue 7y agoGenerally known as BLUF in my circles - Bottom Line Up Front.
- abdullahkhalids 7y agoThe first sentence in most cases should be what you require the receipient to do. The rest of the email can then be why you want them to do it. This has the beneficial effect that the receipient can immediately tell from the first line how important the email is, how time sensitive it is, and how much time and other resources they have to commit to resolve/reply to the email. Examples: * Check issue (from the above example) * Giving you a routine update (no action required from receipient besides reading the email) * Set a meeting (receipient needs to determine when they are free to discuss the why of the email) * Give me permission to do X
- lawn 7y agoThis is also highly beneficial in cover letters and résumés (keep the most important info at the top).
- jordanpg 7y agoTL;DR or BLUF line should be mandatory. Full stop.
- bachmeier 7y agoMy approach would be to have subject "Check and revise the priority of Redmine issue (#455)". I'd then put an explanation in the body of the email. That puts the task in the inbox, and they can open it if they want to see the details again later. This has helped me when there are multiple things that have to be done. I now usually send several messages rather than one, with one task per email. In the cases that is not practical, I make it clear in the subject that there are several things to be done, and the body starts with a list of all the tasks.
- lifeisstillgood 7y agoSometimes we use obfuscation for social reasons - because we don't want to offend some direct recipients "We see a future using efficient automation techniques to improve shareholder value" or "we are firing the expensive useless third of staff" - because we don't know the current opinion of people on the list "We should investigate the options" vs "We are all agreed we should use the new design so let's do that" - we are not sure who the decision maker actually is, or if this is even a problem All of the above may come off as lack of confidence / inability to write clearly but generally it is awareness of difficult social situations that if not handled well would derail the ultimate outcome - in short just because people are not writing "hard charging go getting emails" does not mean they are ineffective - perhaps they are more effective than the bull in a china shop
- splittingTimes 7y agoBeing aware of the power structure/corporate politics going on at your workplace is really important if you want to advance. Also when you work across cultures you need to adjust your tone/approach. As a German working with French coworkers, it took me a while to figure this out.
- konradb 7y ago> As a German working with French coworkers, it took me a while to figure this out. What examples come up the most, or had the most impact on you figuring it out?
- Grumbledour 7y agoIt tends to make you even more angry, though, if you took extra time to emphasize and link messages and you get a unformatted, half sentence reply from someone who clearly did not read the message. I think you should do it anyway, but be prepared for frustration.
- alttab 7y agoWhile completely true, this viewpoint is a little cynical. The challenge in those instances is to think about how to lead these people positively to do the same? How can you make emails seem like a gift? That's how I approach it when I write my best ones.
- andrewshadura 7y agoIs this a joke?
- dijksterhuis 7y agoFor the “structure long messages” bit, i was taught to use the SCRAP mnemonic: Situation: x has broken Complication: dev is on lunch Resolution: wait for dev to return from lunch and request investigation and thoughts on fix Actions: @dev finish lunch; @teamlead inform @dev when returned from lunch; @dev investigate problem and report to @teamlead; @teamlead update @me on progress; @me inform clients on issue @me setup meeting to discuss potential fixes with @teamlead & @dev. Politeness: have a good lunch everyone
- mxuribe 7y agoI've used an almost identical method, but never knew this had a name, or such a neat mnemonic!
- aorth 7y agoI'm a big proponent of using specific times and dates instead of—or in addition to—words like "tomorrow" and "next week." It makes your email easier to understand if you are looking at it any in your email archives or if you communicate with people in different time zones.
- aphextim 7y agoI work for a general contractor which has projects in all time-zones in the United States (Minus Alaska/Hawaii). We have many 12 hour day shift and 12 hour night shift projects that are running 24/7. Using the exact date you are referencing, using military time along with timezone has been invaluable. For example, "John Doe, We are moving the security clearance fingerprinting to be held next Friday, August 9th at 14:30 EST" or "Jane Doe, Just following up on the RFI we submitted yesterday, July 31st at 13:30 EST. Were you able to review?" This also helps when having to hold people accountable for not responding fast enough when you include timestamps.
- magicalhippo 7y agoThis also makes it easier to catch mistakes. If you had said "next Friday, August 8th", maybe you actually meant next Thursday.
- krisalty 7y agoOr you know, pick up a phone and call. I think for most people, it is very rare that they write an essay of an email to someone. And if you are an academic or some professional, you should be doing these things anyways. Or is that the point?
- hartator 7y agoI don’t fully agree with the bold part. I think a better way is to have a small sentence summary at the top of the email. Like “I’ve started working on the backup issues.”
- pflenker 7y agoI am missing one thing from the article: Your subject should be a clear, concise summary of your mail! People will be looking at the subject of your message MUCH more often than at the actual body.
- wastholm 7y agoEspecially when addressing multiple recipients, I tend to write emails like: > Hello, > Short version: all-hands meeting to discuss painting of the bike shed, Thu 1 Aug @ 14:30 in the board room. There will be cookies. > Long version: > <more details> I also tend to first jot down a draft of the "long version", then edit it for clarity and brevity, then write the "short version" last. Edit: I find HN formatting weird sometimes.
- enriquto 7y agoPutting a word in boldface is even more offensive than writing it in ALL CAPS. If you are doing it more than once per year, you are doing it wrong.
- crispyambulance 7y agoIf it's just regular language in most contexts, I agree. But for technical communication where you're using names of things that have a controlled vocabulary, it's really helpful to put those words in a bold mono-space font. Otherwise, you end up using quotes too much and that gets tiresome.
- bradstewart 7y agoIs this a common opinion? I find bold text to be very helpful since it emphasizes the most important part.
- enriquto 7y ago> Is this a common opinion? I said this as a personal opinion; no idea how widespread that is. Boldface strikes me as a lack of respect for the reader. An adult reader is supposed to read the whole text. If there is non-important information, please omit it. The idea if writing a short sentence at the beginning summarizing the action to take is sound, however. It is even better if it appears in the subject of the message.
- 0xffff2 7y ago>An adult reader is supposed to read the whole text. I wish to work in the utopia that is your office if this is even slightly true in practice. I tend to emphasize not a lot in emails where a reader that's skimming might skip the not and get the opposite of the impression that I intended.
- gnuvince 7y ago> Boldface strikes me as a lack of respect for the reader. An adult reader is supposed to read the whole text. Yeah, that's bullshit. Open any CS book on your shelf and you'll see different fonts, different sizes, different weights, different background colors, etc. Those books are not written for kids, they're written for adults—for professionals. The goal of a writer is to control the reading process; changing what the text looks like is one way to do that. We separate the text into paragraphs to delineate different ideas, but also to space out the text and give the reader a chance to breathe. We organize points into bullet points because they're easy to spot, easy to scan, and we don't need to make the text longer by adding flow between each point. We sometimes use frames and a darker background for summaries, auxiliary information, etc. to show that it's not part of the main text. We use large letters to identify different chapters and sections. We use a monospaced font for code examples. We write technical terms in italics when we first introduce them and want to highlight that fact to the reader. There are a multitude of ways in which we format text so that readers can better follow. Bold is just one extra tool in that arsenal. Don't abuse it, but don't forbid it entirely either.
- aphroz 7y agoThese examples looks like bug reports that I don't want to read. The bold/non-bold text, email not balanced and too long paragraphs mixing numbers and letters makes me wanna vomit, not because it's disgusting but more like when you read in a car. I agree with links though.
- mcs_ 7y agoI highlight emergency/mistakes an bad things in general with red background. Resolved situations or positive approach with green background. In both cases white and bold font. After a while, the same color pattern is emerging from customer communication.
- souterrain 7y agoI had been a “true believer” in plain text email until I had a support vendor document a problem using just this technique, including output from the system in question in fixed-width font. While I cringe at the majority of HTML email, this use case I find enormously valuable.
- softwaredoug 7y agoAt some point when I need to “structure an email” usually that’s a red flag to me that I should format it as a report in an attached document (which can be more detailed) then make the email a handful of sentences describing the attached report.
- JeanMarcS 7y agoI always hesitate before using emphasis. I’m afraid it will looks like I think the recipients are stupid or something. But seeing it’s a good advice will change my view on that (I tend to write long emails)
- mavdi 7y agoAbsolutely, you nailed it. It's adds a condescending tone. And no, it's awful advice.
- beshrkayali 7y agoI disagree. I always highlight in bold text the parts that I want people to focus on more, especially in longish emails, or those where there are numbers involved. I also appreciate it when people take the time to highlight what they would like me to pay attention to. It shows a mutual respect of time.
- gfiorav 7y agoI feel like emphasizing is hiding the fact that your email contains arbitrary things. I tend to not decorate and encourage people to read the whole thing. Less is better.
- mhxion 7y agoIn case you TL;DR, the takeaway: - Keep it "concise", "ascribed", and "specific". By concise, avoid irrelevant details; by ascribed, write necessary data even though it's obvious but saves time for the reader by not having to look up, i. e., complete date mm-dd-yy instead of yesterday/tomorrow, links for references; by specific, avoid ambiguity, separate lines for each required query. - Use proper text formatting, i.e, <bold> important texts, wrap links with titles. - Divide long email into separate paragraphs, each can contain its subject. i.e., the way most SaaS services publishes postmortem about an outage or vulnerability. Note: I've read many articles on writing good emails, this article focuses on the technical team, which in itself follows its guidelines.
- robbiemitchell 7y agoObligatory link to an explanation of the BLUF ("bottom line up front") format: https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-precision https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-pre... I see too many people write long emails, both in total word count and in word count per paragraph. Then they wonder why it takes someone 1-2 weeks to respond. Unless you're working in an environment that thrives on them, such as academia, a long email creates a significant cognitive burden on someone who is probably trying to context switch as fast as possible. Combine it with a lack of clear action for the reader -- "What are your thoughts?", for example -- and you will find your emails left indefinitely on their "too hard" pile.
- jakubp 7y agoIf you want to compose better emails, forget formatting. - practice making emails short. Write, then rewrite to 50% of original length, then try to make it even shorter. - make the request a separate paragraph (request = what you want the other person to do) - if your email is an attempt to persuade someone, don't bother. Go talk to them. Email will cause you problems in your career if you keep that up. It's unsuitable as a means of discussion (same as Slack and any other written medium). The only reason to do that is if you can't get the other party on the phone/in person (which is almost never the case).
- hrktb 7y ago> if your email is an attempt to persuade someone, don't bother. I think this is completely accurate for most companies, and so sad at the same time. At a not so extreme point, this means people will pester anyone in a position to take decisions in any possible way. They'll stalk to steal minutes here and there for subjects that can be super complicated and context sensitive, but not important enough to have people stop everything they're doing. They'll book meetings on lunch times, over other meetings. They'll derail meetings because couldn't get a separate meeting. They'll get comments and stark looks because they're obnoxious but it's also the only way to get any decisions from their perspective, and at the end of the day they'll be vindicated as their projects move forward while others stay in the mud. It feels like hell on both sides of the stalking, I guess it's the price to pay when email or chat, or asynchronous communication is seen as a low tier channel.
- jakubp 7y agoYes, it's bad. In my experience it's because relatively low percentage of people in a typical org have enough trust to one another that they won't misinterpret the wrong way.
- Benjammer 7y agoFwiw, I agree with you about speaking in person. I will say though, that I've started to encounter younger people now who will actually come right out and say "I don't do well with face to face conversations and I'd prefer to discuss this on Slack or in a Google Doc" and they somehow get management support for that. Maybe it's just my crazy company, but there seems to be some kind of thing going on where having any amount of social skills is no longer mandatory. And I'm not talking about awkward people who may be hard to talk to, I'm talking about people where you wouldn't realize anything is wrong and then they go complain to HR that they feel "put under too much pressure" by certain people in face to face conversations (it's not just me that get often reported for this, it's like half the engineers). It's not like they really "punish" anyone or anything for these ridiculous reports, but they also don't do anything to solve the issue of people refusing to talk face to face.
- mavdi 7y agoChrist, this is terrible advice. So overzealous and at times I get a childish vibe from the emails written. Please don't do any of this people.
- 0xffff2 7y agoReally? Aside from the emphasis and cat pictures, this all seems like basic advice that's borderline mandatory if you want people to actually read and understand your emails. If you have specific rebuttals to using specific dates, including relevant links, structuring emails well, and making action items clear, I'd really like to hear them.
- waylandsmithers 7y agoInteresting! I'm newer to software and have never done any communication about bugs or other situations the article references via email-- it's always been in person, in a Slack channel, or through JIRA or Github comment threads. I guess it's just my company's culture but it's always been assumed that people will not check or respond to email promptly, so project-related information should not be communicated that way.
- t0astbread 7y agoThis is in direct conflict with the "Use plaintext email" post from a while ago but I honestly agree more with this one. Is Markdown in email a thing yet?
- whafro 7y agoI know this isn't the question you were asking, but ostensibly, Markdown in email has always been a thing, since it's intended to degrade gracefully to human-interpretable formatting.
- kotajacob 7y agoMarkdown is actually a markup language which was inspired and built based on traditional email formatting.
- tathagatadg 7y agoNeat! I have a dream - just like we have issue templates, have organization wide email templates for internal communications. If every email sent in an organization, adhere to 3 to four email templates - that would take away so much of the cognitive load of parsing each snowflake and extracting the meat out of them. As soon as you see a label in the first words of subject you know what you are dealing with - like "bug", "defect", "enhancement" - put "delay", "escalate" etc. Instead of a free form text box with no word limits, there will be more fields that enhance decision making - voting buttons, highlights like you see on medium. The word limit will stop the mind dump and make you be precise with the focus on reaching a goal. Some more unpopular ideas: * A discussion would have follow up limits. Time or number. No month long threads, or 100 replies in half hours. Beyond a limit, it will automatically schedule a meeting for in person discussion to conclude on decisions * email quotas - you can only send n emails within m hours to p persons
- ubermonkey 7y agoThis is a pretty great summary of effective email communication. People would do well to internalize it. I'm glad to see it here on HN.
- 0j 7y agoI like and follow most of this, but the most important topic is missing: use meaningful subjects! I don't want any "Re: Re: Re: Fw: Re: issue..." emails in my inbox. Especially if I later want to find some specific email.
- lucb1e 7y agoThis. As an anti-spam measure (that worked flawlessly so far), instead of putting an email address on my website, I have my website send an email to people with the "From" address set to my address. The subject is something like "To reach me, just reply to this email!" A bunch of people used it, but not a single one managed to change the subject line to describe what their email is actually about. Not one.
- dugluak 7y agoMaybe it's just a bad example in the article. It seems like a regular conversation between a group of people to get things done in an organization. At least in our organization that type of conversation happens in a quick meeting or some collaboration app link Slack or Microsoft Teams, formal composition of messages is not necessary in those kinds of platforms. Email seems to be an overkill for stuff like this ...
- 0xffff2 7y agoI find the idea that email could be overkill compared to any length of meeting to be hilariously backwards. Maybe it's just the particular dysfunction of my organization, but any meeting between more than two people requires multiple emails to set up.
- dugluak 7y ago[ Hello all, I noticed that there are many logs for blabla the last few days and I don't think that it is normal. I believe the problem is the updated version of gem blabla. I have opened an issue describing the case in Redmine (#455) in the current version. Feel free to change its priority in case blabla. Thanks, Lazarus ] My point is that the above piece of conversation happening over an email is super slow and backwards. Lazarus should just be able to talk to the group directly which a platform like Slack or Teams makes possible.
- 0xffff2 7y agoWe clearly exist in radically different worlds. To me, sending that email is talking directly to the group. Nobody at my org uses Skype (our organization's IM service of choice). Email works just fine. If it's actually important and the person or people you're emailing are actually available, email is no slower than IM/chat.
- dugluak 7y agoI agree Email is slow is an arguable statement, for email you need to add recipients sometimes CC and BCC carefully plus you need Hi/Hello/Thanks/Signature etc which makes it more formal for daily communication for getting things done. My Second issue with email is, in the above example let's say Bob and Alice have different questions about Lazarus's email and start typing their responses at the same time and send them. Now you have 2 different threads of the email and this can go on and on and in no time you have chains of emails flying around. Let's say John (one of the people copied on that email) is on vacation. He is going to have tough time trying to go through that mess and piece everything together.
- gwbas1c 7y agoI try to keep most emails short: (Approximately) 3 sentences, broken into 3 paragraphs. That's most peoples' attention span for email. I only write longer emails when someone asks me a question; such as when a manager asks me to research and root cause something. Even then, I usually try to follow the 3-line rule, then put a ----, and then the longer email. BTW: When I get a very loooong email, sent directly to me, I don't read it. I will usually reply with something like, "I don't read long emails" and suggest that the author find time to meet with me directly.
- MagnumOpus 7y ago> reply with something like, "I don't read long emails" and suggest that the author find time to meet with me directly. Everyone you suggested that to thinks you are a dick. They spent half an hour or more writing just so you can absorb the information asynchronously at your convenience rather than having to schedule yet-another meeting and take notes -- and then you want to waste another half-hour of their time because you can't be bothered reading.
- gwbas1c 7y agoIt's usually not a case of "absorb the information asynchronously," instead, it's being upfront with ignoring rants.
- mike_kamau 7y agoThis is great advice. Thanks for posting
- highhedgehog 7y agoI need to spam this in my company
- highhedgehog 7y agoHuge missing thing: SUBJECTS. Please use descriptive subjects.
- sorum 7y agoIndeed, it's the MOST important part. Easiest way to do it - write it dead last. Write your email in this order: 1. Body of email 2. Formatting: fix the paragraphs, bold/underline, create headers if longer piece 3. Subject line
- highhedgehog 7y ago> Easiest way to do it - write it dead last. Yep! Agreed. Still i constantly receive mails that are not descriptive enough. If there are IDs to change requests, deploys etc, why don't you put that ID in the subject so it's easy to get to it later?!
- gumboshoes 7y agoPro tip: good subject lines improve the chances your email will be read, acted on, remembered, and found again later. Every marketing person knows this but the importance doesn't seem to leave that domain. Make them 45 characters or less or so. Bad: "Question" Good: "Any avail. tomorrow Tues. 12/2?" Combine actual dates AND relative ones. Days of week help. Bad: "Millie Smith" Good: "Millie Smith asst. dir. new hire" Bad: "Tuesday" Good: "work from home - Tuesday planned power outage" Bad: "report" Good: "2Q19 sales dept. new business report" Bad: "canceled meeting" Good: "Wed. 4/3 sales meeting canceled"
- gHosts 7y agoAnd on the subject of what most not to do.... For pity sake don't send a picture of a log or an error dump..... send the text. Please. Pretty please. With tears in my eyes.
- prawn 7y agoI think the "Structure long messages" section could be more succinct. Background, Consequences, etc (unless they're company standards) don't really impart much information. It could be better to instead have practical info as those titles. e.g., instead of Background, have "Huge increase in log messages". Instead of "Cause of the problem" have "Caused by bug in external library". That way, if people only read the headings, they still get a useful understanding of the issue immediately.