Abbreviate Your Emails

When sending emails do yourself and your colleagues a favor, keep it brief. Emails are great for communication, but if they become too long it makes you look like either a blowhard or someone who can’t spit it out.


I’m part of the MTV generation and I blame their truncation of videos (you're guilty too, VH1) for my extremely short attention span. Honestly, there are some goldfish that probably have a longer attention span than me. If it takes you more than a few paragraphs to get your point across, pick up the phone, or better still take a walk and deliver the message in person (given this country’s obesity rates, you could probably use the walk).

Use lots of spacing or paragraphs to make it easy on the reader’s eyes, as well. Whenever I get long blocky emails, I tend to glaze over and the point of the email (if there ever was one) is lost.

I’d write more on this subject, but I’m afraid I’d lose you after a few more lines (some of you are already gone).