

Using Writing Smells to Refactor Your Email - adarshpandit
http://robots.thoughtbot.com/post/30518925872/using-writing-smells-to-refactor-your-email

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happimess
There are some good ideas here, but putting each sentence into its own
paragraph makes for choppy prose. Split them out and consider each one on its
own, but once each sentence is as tight as it's going to get, why not combine
related ones into paragraphs?

The example email is, to my eye, three paragraphs:

    
    
      “Hey Ralph,
    
      I’m glad to meet another fellow Quebecois and lover of
      poutine last night at the meetup. If you’re in town next
      week, let’s meet up. I suggest Cafe Madeline for coffee
      on Tuesday at 3pm.
    
      I’m interested to learn more about example.com and tell
      you more about thoughtbot. If you haven’t already done
      so, take a look at thoughtbot.com to see some of our
      recent projects. Also, take a look at our playbook
      (playbook.thoughtbot.com) for more detail on our
      approach to building startups.
    
      Looking forward to hearing from you.
    
      -Rolf”

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adarshpandit
A fair point. For me, I find it's easier to read short, punchy sentences when
they are on separate lines.

I also find (for myself) that _all_ lines get read when formatted this way, as
opposed to scanning through a paragraph getting some of it.

Thanks for the feedback!

------
kennu
I still try to live by this rule, and keep it in my signature:

<http://three.sentenc.es/>

Sometimes it's three paragraphs instead of three sentences, but I think that
tends to work nearly as well.

