A corollary is that if you do have to write a long email, try to start it off with a short, 1-2 sentence intro paragraph that piques interest and pulls people i

A corollary is that if you do have to write a long email, try to start it off with a short, 1-2 sentence intro paragraph that piques interest and pulls people in to the rest of the text. Even better, try to keep all the paragraphs as short as possible. Each paragraph has two jobs: to convey some information, and to convince the reader to keep going to the next paragraph. Done right, you can get someone to read a long text without it feeling like they read a lot, because you kept them curious about what comes next the whole way through. Kurt Vonnegut was a master of this technique. The vast majority his paragraphs are very short. It's almost like prose poetry. You (semi-consciously) keep thinking "I'll just read a few more lines" until you look up after 4 hours and realize you're just a few pages from the end of a 300 page novel. So it goes.