Start With Your Conclusion

Another way to think about getting to the crux of your message is to always try to start with your conclusion. According to rigorously unscientific polling conducted in my classes, most people think that the perfect length for an email message is about three sentences and that anything more than that is just too long. And without a doubt the number one complaint I hear about email is that most of it is too long and time consuming. When people talk to me about this issue they tend to roll their eyes, throw up their hands and sigh dramatically, as though they’ve been victimized by some particularly senseless crime.

Don’t make your readers feel like victims. Whether they’re justified or not in feeling that reading a whole paragraph is a feat of endurance, treating your readers the way they want to be treated means that you’ll have much more of a chance of getting them to pay attention to your message and to treat it with the urgency and respect it deserves. Treat them poorly and they’re liable to ignore your message or even try to subvert it. Most people can easily think of someone who sends long and tedious messages. Come on, I bet you’ve got someone in mind yourself. In my experience these people often encounter a lot of resistance or are not treated seriously-- not because of what they say, but because of the length they go to in saying it. If you’ve ever ignored a long email from someone because you just couldn’t bear the idea of responding to it, you know just what I’m talking about.

Besides, if you write more than a couple sentences some of your readers are likely to just stop reading, discouraging as that may be. Get to your point right away. If you feel like you really need to explain yourself afterwards go ahead and do it in the end of your message-- not at the beginning-- where you can better afford to lose the attention of your readers.