Thanksfully, you are not alone, and lots of these cuts have been codified into best practices...and published as guides by the big players in the email marketin

Thanksfully, you are not alone, and lots of these cuts have been codified into best practices...and published as guides by the big players in the email marketing world (e.g. mailchimp, campaign monitor, etc.). If/Whenever you need to work in this area, just look up one of those guides from those established players and follow their lead...better yet, grab one of their templates when they offer them. In addition, as @cygned has noted, there are even some "meta languages" (like MJML and many others) created by these same big email providers that serve to do away with some of the more annoying parts of crafting email templates. Of course, i hope to never have to spend too muich time in creating templates for email....just too many nightmares from so many yearsplaying in this space! ;-)