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How to Write an Email

blog.dannycastonguay.com

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Re: How to Write an Email

#31

Post by conductr »

alentred wrote: post #7

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…

I’ve set my work calendar to auto rejects invitations without an agenda. If you can randomly steal 30 minutes of my time, you will be required to at least give me some minimal context as to why. The rejection note simply says, “please include an agenda”

Re: How to Write an Email

#32

Post by BeetleB »

sdevonoes wrote: post #17
jaffa2 wrote: post #6

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 lim…

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 nee…

> 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?

In one team I did this all the time even though I didn't have the decision power. I did it to force people to respond.

Prior to my adopting this strategy, I'd send an email saying "We need a decision about this by X", and the most common response was ... sorry, there wasn't any! The majority of times people didn't respond, and I was stuck.

So I had to switch to "This is needed by X. I'm going to go ahead with Y, but let me know if you have other ideas."

And I would ensure that Y was a poor solution. I would get really rapid responses saying "Don't do Y! Do Z!"

Even though I've moved to other teams, I often use this technique (except if the team acts in good faith, my solution Y is actually my best attempt at solving it).

Re: How to Write an Email

#33

Post by BeetleB »

alentred wrote: post #7

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…

> 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".

Ha! When I was in grad school, we had a brilliant French student in our team. He did his MS, and decided halfway he hated the US (understandable at the time) and would return to Europe for the PhD.

When he started applying for positions, he would just keep cursing. When I asked what was wrong, he said he'd gotten used to the (more) direct American approach, and was finding it burdensome to write formal, sycophantic emails to people in France.

Re: How to Write an Email

#34

Post by zenoprax »

EvanAnderson wrote: post #5

I feel like incorporating the BLUF[0] strategy has helped my emails be more effective. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)

This was such an improvement to mine as well. Lots of strange advice in this thread about "one sentence/question per email" and other arbitrary terseness. Just use a messaging system for single-thread async communication.

Writing the email is part of the thinking process for me so by the time I finish there is a single coherent sentence that I can cut-paste to the top with the rationale/evidence/etc organized below it. If the one-liner is enough they can skip the rest (which I needed to write anyway regardless) and if they need more detail they don't have to ask.

Some other practices I've picked up over the years:

Responses should always be inline between relevant quotes rather than the default of hiding the original at the bottom. Remove quotes that don't matter. My favourite responses are a simple "Agreed." after a long quoted paragraph of justification.

In general the email chain should get shorter with each reply otherwise it suggests that the topic is either too complex or insufficiently defined. It also gives some sense that it will eventually end!

Write subject lines that make searching/filtering easy to do later rather than something to catch the recipient's attention.

Re: How to Write an Email

#35

Post by tempestn »

The thing I've been struggling with recently is how to sign off. When "Thanks" isn't called for, I always feel awkward using any of the standard sign-offs, like "Cheers", "Best", "Regards"... I'm somewhat leaning toward just using Thanks when it makes sense, and if it doesn't, then just "-Myname" is probably fine.

Re: How to Write an Email

#36

Post by EvanAnderson »

zenoprax wrote: post #34
EvanAnderson wrote: post #5

I feel like incorporating the BLUF[0] strategy has helped my emails be more effective. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BLUF_(communication)

This was such an improvement to mine as well. Lots of strange advice in this thread about "one sentence/question per email" and other arbitrary terseness. Just use a messaging system for single-thread async communication. Writing the email is part of the thinking process for me so by the time I finish there is a single coherent sentence that I can cut-paste to the top with the rationale/evidence/etc organized below i…

> Writing the email is part of the thinking process for me...

Same here.

> Responses should always be inline between relevant quotes rather than the default of hiding the original at the bottom.

This is highly polarizing. As you can tell I also like inline replies. I grew up using BBSs and inline replies were common. It seemed so natural. Then Outlook came around and top-posting became the norm.

I have gotten some scathing criticism from higher-ups for inline responses (along with some scant praise). I have been told, repeatedly, that inline responses are confusing.

Personally, I think anybody confused by inline responses (particularly if they're formatted distinctly) probably shouldn't be using email as part of their job because they lack the necessary mental faculties.

(I've given up with my strongly-held beliefs about plain text email. I still send plain text by default but I grudgingly reply with HTML / rich text if an email started that way.)

Re: How to Write an Email

#37

Post by vulcan01 »

BeetleB wrote: post #32
sdevonoes wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 nee…

> 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? In one team I did this all the time even though I didn't have the decision power. I did it to force people to respond. Prior to my adopting this strategy, I'd send an email saying "We need a decision about this by X", and the mo…

> And I would ensure that Y was a poor solution.

How do you ensure people don't think you're not good at your job, if you continually propose poor solutions? Since you're emailing other teams here, they probably(?) don't get to work with you day-to-day to realize you're doing this on purpose.

Also, what's the point of Y being a poor solution? Even if the other team isn't very responsive, can't you always propose your

> best attempt at solving it

such that even if they don't respond, you can implement a decent solution?

Re: How to Write an Email

#38

Post by m000 »

realityfactchex wrote: post #9

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 det…

> My boss taught me this.

And it shows. If you are not the boss, you can't just write something and expect the recipient to figure it out.

Re: How to Write an Email

#40

Post by bradley13 »

stronglikedan wrote: post #11
realityfactchex wrote: post #9

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 det…

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.

Disagree. Way too many modes of communication, which is endlessly irritating. If you want to send me a message at work, email is the common denominator.
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