do you like your email smooth or chunky?

[inhumandecency]

I was just subjected to some embarrassment when Dr. R. mentioned today's data meeting to me in passing, and I had no idea what he was talking about (meaning that the embarrassment was actually a stroke of luck, compared to missing the meeting). I looked in my email to see how I could have missed the announcement. His most recent email was a huge,

Comments

[dragonpaws]

I don't USUALLY send multiple emails, but I always do for Barb (in fact, I just finished sending two back-to-back on different projects) and other work colleagues who I know are particularly busy. Or when I think something's really important and don't want it to get lost in the shuffle.

In receiving this kind of thing, it can be good and it can be annoying-- it depends on whether each email is a self-contained unit, or whether the emails refer to other emails "to come" or just sent or something. Then it's really irritating because it gives me filing problems. And of course one can feel deluged, but I still think it's better than one monster email of everything.

And I try to always put meeting suggestions in the TITLE of the email, for just the reason you experienced.

[inhumandecency]

That's a good idea, which makes it ironic that professors are much more likely than my other correspondents to leave the subject line blank (or to have an unrelated historic subject line, because they found your address by going to a random old email and hitting "reply").

[griffjon]

I go back and forth, but for immediate things (like meetings) I always send them separately, or within work, as a calendar invite.

One subject line per message, one subject per message

[cherdt]

I definitely send multiple messages to the same person.

I also keep paragraphs much shorter than in more formal writing.

Re: One subject line per message, one subject per message

[inhumandecency]

Yes, I do the same with paragraphs. For some reason blocks of text are much more off-putting on the screen (or perhaps they're off-putting when the recipient is in email-reading mode). I think the implicit rule may be that I start a new paragraph every time I get to something I don't want to let the reader skip over.

One difference I'd like to see make its way into offline writing is paragraph separation. Leaving a blank line is easier on the eyes, and easier to scan, than going to the next line and indenting. I think indenting may even make the first line of a paragraph _less_ noticeable than the other lines. This would also eliminate a host of typographic minutiae that bring misery to students trying to get their dissertation formatted...

Paragraph indentation vs. separation

[cherdt]

Business writing has tended towards paragraph separation for a long time (one of the few tendencies of business writing I prefer). The web helps, as there is no good way to indent a paragraph in HTML, and the default is to put 1 line of margin between paragraphs.

Microsoft Word is on that bandwagon too, which means it will shortly become the de facto standard. That will trickle down to doctoral students in, what, 200 years?

[topazirradiated]

yes, definitely, especially to people at work. We often reference old emails and if you throw four or five things in together, it's much harder to look through your archives for the one you want.

I always assume people will ignore the question i most want the answer to unless i send it, standing alone in an email like a sentinel, waiting, waiting for an answer.

[inhumandecency]

I like that method! You're right, it's much easier to intentionally or unintentionally ignore a small part of a letter while composing a long reply, but ignoring an entire email is just plain shameless.

[qmrf]

Depending on the person, I've sometimes found I have to limit myself to one sentence per e-mail if I want things responded to.

For some people, I can put multiple topics in a single e-mail - usually when they're "items to think about", rather than "respond to all of these, plz".

In some cases, I put multiple questions to different people about a single topic in the same e-mail that goes to the three or four of them - because reply-to-all is useful in that context, and prevents unnecessary forwarding. With some groups at work, this works very well.

There's exactly one person at work who fits the worst stereotypes of "bureaucrat" - for her, I have to ask, "Does property x have this permit?" and, "When does/did that permit expire?" as separate, sequential e-mails. If I put those two sentences in the same e-mail, I'll usually get "Yes."

[greenfountain]

Yes.

[patchworkalice]

i ALWAYS send multiple emails. in the freak occasions when i don't, i number the paragraphs by topic.

i hope people find this useful instead of annoying. at the very least, i hope it helps me get responses.

[cherdt]

I use numbered lists as well, usually for multiple questions pertaining to one topic. Otherwise, people will answer one question (usually the first or the last) and ignore the rest.

This also reminds me of how I will ask someone "A, or B?" via e-mail and I will frequently get the reply, "Yes."

[hearth_spirit]

Speaking as a computer scientist, "yes" is a completely valid answer to "a or b". Perhaps your respondents were using boolean logic?

[cherdt]

Speaking as a computer scientist, 0.