HOWTO compose a great email

Today on Wired's HOWTO wiki, advice on writing a perfect email. Practically speaking, this is about how to send a perfect email to a stranger (since your friends already love you, bad email habits and all). I get a lot of email from strangers -- invitations to speak or write for a site or magazine, interview requests, questions about Boing Boing, Creative Commons, or writing, that kind of thing. I try to answer as much as I can (I get to about 90 percent of it), but it's often the case that the emails are structured in a way that makes them especially hard to answer. This, in turn, has really changed how I compose my own email when initiating a correspondence. This HOWTO includes a lot of great advice -- things you can do to make sure your mail gets answered.

Getting a lot of responses asking, "What do you mean?" Context is your problem. When you're asking a question, anticipate any missing details that could cause an extended back-and-forth. Each time someone sends you a reply, you've gone to the back of that person's line. Do what you can to make your emails count the first time.

And for god's sake, have a subject line. One that makes sense. Some of the most important emails I've received didn't have a subject, and they almost fell through as a result. Don't waste that space with words like "Important" or "Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:". If the topic changes, change the subject line to match it. Remember that on recipients' screens, your subject competes with a large number of others for their attention.

Old-school email users have a tendency to trim everything out of the body of an email except their replies. Don't do this. For example, if you send me an invitation to speak at a conference and I ask what the topic is, you might reply with just the topic, snipping out all the details of the conference. If I've forgotten about your email by the time you reply, this means that I've got to go back through an enormous email archive to find your original message in order to figure out what you're talking about. Even if I remember, it means that I no longer have the details to hand. Don't trim email. Let it run long. It's the 21st century: an email with an extra 10k of old text at the bottom of it isn't going to swamp my mailer (the 20,000 daily spams are doing that very nicely, thank you).

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[#1 posted by jere7my , September 7, 2007 6:41 PM]

I agree, Geno! The goal is to make sure that all of the information the recipient needs is easily accessible (and, secondarily, to send a concise and appealing email). Burying that information in a nested >>>> avalanche isn't going to save your recipient any time. Better to selectively quote the salient details, and snip the salutations and .sigs, sez me.

(The exception comes if you're writing to someone who requires a bit trail of the entire correspondence for legal or other reasons, but that's presumably not usually the case.)

[#2 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 7:13 PM]

> If I've forgotten about your email by the time you reply, this means that I've got to go back through an enormous email archive to find your original message in order to figure out what you're talking about.

It's the 21st century: get an email client that doesn't suck, and look at the previous message in the thread.

[#3 posted by Anonymous , September 7, 2007 8:41 PM]

Because people read from top to bottom.

> Why do we hate people who top quote?

[#4 posted by driveby commentator , September 7, 2007 11:07 PM]

I liked it better when it was posted @43Folders: Writing Sensible Email Messages

/snark           : )

[#5 posted by Anonymous , September 8, 2007 4:48 AM]

> It's the 21st century: an email with an extra
> 10k of old text at the bottom of it isn't going
> to swamp my mailer...

I moderate numerous mailman, yahoo, and topica mailing lists. In all cases, list subscribers can set their preferences between digest and individual emails.

In digest mode, those long chains of un-trimmed text become a real barrier to clarity.

Just something to remember when posting to email lists. Most of this advice was good, but that comment definitely rubbed me the wrong way.

[#6 posted by Anonymous , September 8, 2007 8:58 AM]

"Old-school email users have a tendency to trim everything out of the body of an email except their replies. Don't do this.."

I take exception to this.

One thing I hate is to send out a long email or an email with photos then have people reply – often with only one sentence – by quoting my entire original back to me, photos text and all. There's nothing worse than sending an email with a 1MB photo embedded only to have some jerk send it back to you with with the comment 'nice photo.'

[#7 posted by Anonymous , September 8, 2007 9:19 AM]

I just wanted to say Cory rocks. He actually does reply to just about everything he gets in his email inbox. I was really bummed out and uninspired one day and sent a mopey, depressed email to him fully expecting to be ignored by a very busy guy. But no, Cory took the time to reply and that fact alone meant a lot to me.

You're an inspiration Cory. You're a class act.

[#8 posted by Peter K. , September 14, 2007 6:31 PM]

Seems like every time someone on a mailing list tries to write the Definitive Guide on how to format e-mail replies it starts the format wars all over again.