All emails should be 2 lines only, is something I learned when I started working in an office. For example,
WHAT YOU ARE SAYING
WHAT YOU NEED FROM YOUR AUDIENCE (RESPONSE OR DECISION OR ACTION ETC)
My boss taught me this. Because people just don't read long emails. Simple as. Do YOU (want to or have time to) read someone else's long emails?
As time goes on, often I say (to myself) "forget that", and write all the detail that is needed anyway, even in email. But only for audiences that may care about the detail (or otherwise are safe to skip the email altogether).
But who uses email at work anymore, anyway, right? I guess some organizations.
Please reply by 3 pm today so we can confirm with the client.
in my experience when an action relies on somebody 'coming back' ESPECIALLY if it's a client. (do you want this, or that?)
It's best to tell them what you are going to do, unless they confirm otherwise.
e.g. We will proceed with removing feature Y to meet deadline of Mar 19, unless otherwise directed by 3pm today.
This avoids the limbo situtation where a team can't progress because they don't have clarity on X or Y.
Not always applicable but I find it works a lot of the time.
After sending emails to suppliers, they would often answer the first point in the text but ignore later points. This speaks to the send only 1 thing in an email, but if you have a few questions about something then put them in a numbered list.
I found response quality went way up when i did this, and often the responses were along the lines of :
1. do this
2. yes that's right
3. ok we note that
which i'm sure helps them becuaes the email is easier to read and parse in the first place and easier to write a reply to.
Certainly I have never been in such a situation, but just for me to understand: if the sender has enough decision power to move forward with a default action without confirmation, then the email is simply a polite notice to someone above in the command chain, isn’t it?
Why the email then? Wouldn’t a record of the decision (not via email , but in some confluence-like space) be enough? If the confirmation is really needed then a default action wouldn’t be possible, ofc
I find that making the very last sentence a question makes it much more likely that I'll get a response than if the question is anywhere else in the email. The person needs to finish reading the email with the question, which prompts them to hit reply and answer it.
The immediate-response-rate goes down even more if the input being sought is not framed as a question ("I've been trying to figure out how to handle this situation" versus "Which do you think is the better route?").
Of course, some people will still respond regardless, but I've found that in both personal and business emails, keeping an email short and finishing with a question mark is the best way to ensure a rapid response.
To adjust, I've switched to stair-stepped bullets instead of normal paragraphs.
e.g.:
* This will need a new DNS entry.
* We will need firewall rules punched through to baz.
* More networking blah here.
* Do we need access permissions?
* If so, let me know and I'll investigate.
* Primary implementations are FOO and BAR.
* Minimum featureset assumes no permission constraint.
* [etc]
The reader may quick-read the parent bullets and skip the indented bits.
Preach. I would love to see all email like this. I learnt this in my very first work place and will never get the trend of starting every email with "I hope you are doing well".
I live and work in France, and oh boy... It's just cultural. Every email is like a letter to the King. "Would you be so kind enough to consider my humble request that is described hereafter in next three paragraphs". Funny thing: I welcome AI summaries on those.
My other pet peeve: meeting invitations. Half of the meetings in my calendar are called "Point" in French (loosely translated as "Topic"), the other half has no descriptions but the headlines. I tried the "I am not going unless I know why I am invited" thing to no avail - you cannot win this against the entire org.
So, you guess from the list of invitees. Or ask the organizer at lunch. Then go with them to the meeting to discuss the Topic for 15 minutes. Which could have been easily discussed at lunch, but lunch time is reserved to discuss food, not work.
Oh well. I love our cuisine, though. And the culture, and people, everything really. Just not how we write email.
For all the stress about making emails short and to the point, this subject example is entirely too long. No one is reading all this.
> Good: Action needed today: approve revised offer Decision needed: pricing for Client X Update: contract signed with Acme Risk: launch delayed by one week
Some of these are good, but a lot of it depends on company culture. It sounds like he's barking orders at people, which may be received poorly. Some of it borders on sounding like Kevin in The Office when he tried to eliminate words from his speech to save time.
I took technical writing my freshman year of college. The teacher said I was a natural. I then transferred to the business college and they beat that right out of me.
i learned the SCRAP mnemonic a long while ago: Situation; Complication; Resolution; Actions; Politeness.
works when the recipient is attuned to it. when the recipient is attuned to flowery/over-polite language i've found they can get upset/assume you're being rude/dismissive.
decent guidelines, esp for someone new to office work. my advice: nobody wants to read your email, so if you must send one keep it extremely short: between 0 to 3 sentences.
All emails should be 2 lines only, is something I learned when I started working in an office. For example,
My boss taught me this. Because people just don't read long emails. Simple as. Do YOU (want to or have time to) read someone else's long emails?As time goes on, often I say (to myself) "forget that", and write all the detail that is needed anyway, even in email. But only for audiences that may care about the detail (or otherwise are safe to skip the email altogether).
But who uses email at work anymore, anyway, right? I guess some organizations.
I prefer adding the detail; if it's going to turn into a phone call anyway I might as well have a script ready to go.
Most orgs still rely heavily on email, and most emails should be more than two lines to be useful. If it's only two lines, Slack it.
in his email he says :
Please reply by 3 pm today so we can confirm with the client.
in my experience when an action relies on somebody 'coming back' ESPECIALLY if it's a client. (do you want this, or that?)
It's best to tell them what you are going to do, unless they confirm otherwise.
e.g. We will proceed with removing feature Y to meet deadline of Mar 19, unless otherwise directed by 3pm today.
This avoids the limbo situtation where a team can't progress because they don't have clarity on X or Y.
Not always applicable but I find it works a lot of the time.
After sending emails to suppliers, they would often answer the first point in the text but ignore later points. This speaks to the send only 1 thing in an email, but if you have a few questions about something then put them in a numbered list.
I found response quality went way up when i did this, and often the responses were along the lines of :
1. do this 2. yes that's right 3. ok we note that
which i'm sure helps them becuaes the email is easier to read and parse in the first place and easier to write a reply to.
Certainly I have never been in such a situation, but just for me to understand: if the sender has enough decision power to move forward with a default action without confirmation, then the email is simply a polite notice to someone above in the command chain, isn’t it?
Why the email then? Wouldn’t a record of the decision (not via email , but in some confluence-like space) be enough? If the confirmation is really needed then a default action wouldn’t be possible, ofc
I find that making the very last sentence a question makes it much more likely that I'll get a response than if the question is anywhere else in the email. The person needs to finish reading the email with the question, which prompts them to hit reply and answer it.
The immediate-response-rate goes down even more if the input being sought is not framed as a question ("I've been trying to figure out how to handle this situation" versus "Which do you think is the better route?").
Of course, some people will still respond regardless, but I've found that in both personal and business emails, keeping an email short and finishing with a question mark is the best way to ensure a rapid response.
Also, strictly one question per email - otherwise only the first will be answered and any others ignored!
I struggle to be concise.
To adjust, I've switched to stair-stepped bullets instead of normal paragraphs.
e.g.:
The reader may quick-read the parent bullets and skip the indented bits.Seems to work alright.
Preach. I would love to see all email like this. I learnt this in my very first work place and will never get the trend of starting every email with "I hope you are doing well".
I live and work in France, and oh boy... It's just cultural. Every email is like a letter to the King. "Would you be so kind enough to consider my humble request that is described hereafter in next three paragraphs". Funny thing: I welcome AI summaries on those.
My other pet peeve: meeting invitations. Half of the meetings in my calendar are called "Point" in French (loosely translated as "Topic"), the other half has no descriptions but the headlines. I tried the "I am not going unless I know why I am invited" thing to no avail - you cannot win this against the entire org.
So, you guess from the list of invitees. Or ask the organizer at lunch. Then go with them to the meeting to discuss the Topic for 15 minutes. Which could have been easily discussed at lunch, but lunch time is reserved to discuss food, not work.
Oh well. I love our cuisine, though. And the culture, and people, everything really. Just not how we write email.
I feel like incorporating the BLUF[0] strategy has helped my emails be more effective.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)
For all the stress about making emails short and to the point, this subject example is entirely too long. No one is reading all this.
> Good: Action needed today: approve revised offer Decision needed: pricing for Client X Update: contract signed with Acme Risk: launch delayed by one week
Some of these are good, but a lot of it depends on company culture. It sounds like he's barking orders at people, which may be received poorly. Some of it borders on sounding like Kevin in The Office when he tried to eliminate words from his speech to save time.
Best if the subject line is the conclusion and the message supports that.
Subject: feature X dropped from v4.4
Body: we all know this feature is delayed and will cause the release to slip. Marketing gave us the OK to defer it to 4.5
Dear Aunt Bee, Thank you for the sweater.
https://tinyurl.com/z9m89k2z
I took technical writing my freshman year of college. The teacher said I was a natural. I then transferred to the business college and they beat that right out of me.
i learned the SCRAP mnemonic a long while ago: Situation; Complication; Resolution; Actions; Politeness.
works when the recipient is attuned to it. when the recipient is attuned to flowery/over-polite language i've found they can get upset/assume you're being rude/dismissive.
decent guidelines, esp for someone new to office work. my advice: nobody wants to read your email, so if you must send one keep it extremely short: between 0 to 3 sentences.