

The Elegant Email - filament
http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2012/10/14/the_elegant_email.html

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tarr11
The irony is rich here. A blog post of 21 paragraphs and 1,302 words devoted
to brevity?

I did him a favor of shortening it.

<http://tldr.io/tldrs/507b5e078edaf0c942000faa>

BTW - "I do not believe email is not a long form communication medium, and my
rule of thumb is that an email should be no longer than three (or four)
paragraphs. You might hate this stipulation."

I assume this is a typo?

~~~
nickheer
I don't see a typo. The way I read it, Lopp doesn't believe that email cannot
ever be used as a long-form communication method, but he sticks to a general
rule of 3-4 paragraphs.

~~~
jrajav
Shouldn't it have been a 'but' and not an 'and', then?

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dsr_
All you folks working on automated email tools, workflows and specialized
HTML-JavaScript-CSS mail formatters?

Stop. Read this. Consider whether your tool adds to human experiences or
should be replaced by a webpage with a FAQ.

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cdcarter
If you find that you must send a long email full of information and questions
(a meeting is impossible due to distance or scheduling), please be sure to
break it down by recipient/department and bullet point for them! 14 long
paragraphs with actions for a person spread around unevenly is no way to
communicate.

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oakwhiz
I find that some spam filters will mark your email as spam if it has a
"poetic" subject line. For this reason I stick to the point. Perhaps it is
because spam email subject lines are poetic as well.

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swah
Is he being ironic about the signature? I thought it should be "as short as
possible"...

