I receive many emails¹¹ Most of my online communication occurs in more chat-like threads in community-oriented venues (Zulip, Slack, CampusWire, Discord, GitHub Discussions, MS Teams) leaving email for a mix of announcements, business, and unsolicited requests..

Many of the emails I receive are poorly written for their purpose, often so much so that I lack the energy to parse them out.

This post is my list of things I try to remember when I write emails, and which I²² I don’t pretend that these are universal desires, but I think they will help in most business email contexts. wish others did as well.

Summarizing subject lines

Assume your recipient receives many emails, and uses the subject line for two purposes: to decide which emails to open³³ At least which to open first, and possibly which to ever open. and as a key part of finding emails later⁴⁴ Typically looking for old emails involves a search which shows a list of possible hits; picking the right search hit is the most common role of the subject line..

Misleading

If a subject line is misleading, it can lead to it not being read at all or being read by an annoyed reader.

A simple case is crying wolf, emails with URGENT or TIME SENSITIVE or REPLY NEEDED when those are not accurate descriptors of the message body.

A more common case is the misuse of email client’s reply features. I often get emails with a subject like Re: Welcome to CS 418 and a message body that’s asking for a regrade on assignment 7 or the like.

Redundant

Some subject lines that provide no information.

This includes no subject line at all, but more commonly the subject repeats other metadata; for example

Subject: Hi, Luther
To: luther@…
Subject: A message from the dean
From: my dean
Subject: ACM TechNews, Wednesday, July 23, 2025
From: technews-editor@acm.org
Sent: 2025-07-23

Categorizing

Categorizing subject lines categorize the type of message, facilitating decisions on when to read the message; but they fail to distinguish entries within that category, failing to facilitate later search.

Examples I have received in recent months include

Extension request
IT ticket number #123456789
Question about your class
Party!

Best

The best subject lines summarize the entire message body, and do so with only a few words with the most important words first so that even if my email client cuts off the ends of the subject lines I still get the point.

Examples I have received in recent months include

Extension on [Assignment] due to pneumonia
Vote on [Name]’s affiliate faculty appointment by [Date]
Seeking research mentor and funding in nonphotorealistic raytracing

Shorter = better

Write your email, then go back and remove as much of it as you can.

When I read an email that begins Esteemed sir, I am a great fan of your work and would be honored and privileged if you would give me a moment of your time, or The other day I was thinking about what you said last week about… I set the rest of the message aside for some hypothetical future day when I have time to plow through the filler text to find the point.

I find I can often write an email I think is already succinct, then edit it to half its length without loss of information.

Skimmable

Email is something I almost never read: I skim it.

I skim to see if I can discard the message.
I skim to find what the message is asking me to do.
I skim to identify parts I might need to read in full.

I generally spend less than 30 seconds trying to understand what an email is primarily about; it it takes longer I often give up and move on to another email instead.

Skimmability is aided by summarizing subject lines and brief text, but goes beyond that. Other things to consider:

Put the most important part first.
Use bullets for lists.
Bold key parts of longer text.
Group related content with clear labels.

Preemtive question answering

The ideal email exchange (when an exchange is even needed) is 2 total emails: one request, one response. This ideal is only achievable if the initial request contains enough information for the response to close the matter.

Examples of missing info I get often include

Can we meet? with no indication of the requestor’s schedule.
Can I have an extension on my assignment? with no indication of how long an extension is needed, nor of why an extension is warranted.
Will you advise my research? with no indication what that research is.
Can you regrade my test? without indicating what part of it seems to be misgraded in what way.
A teaching assistant wasn’t helpful without indicating which assistant or how they were unhelpful.

Before sending an email, ask yourself what questions are they likely to ask in their reply? and then add the answers to those to the email.

Explicit expectations

If you want something, ask for it. Surprisingly many emails fail to do this, assuming that I will intuit the correct response even if none was requested.

Implicit expectations are culturally dependent. For example,

Some think that every email deserves an acknowledging reply; others think that unsolicited replies are annoying.
Some think that announcing a challenge is requesting a solution; others think it is just keeping people in the loop.
Some think that being told about an event is being invited to participate; others think that assuming an invitation is rude.

If you want me to do something, make it clear what that is. In some cases, also make clear what isn’t expected with markers like FYI or no response needed.

Commensurate effort

Most email requests require effort to fulfill. Some of that effort can and should be put in by the requester. Failure to do so makes the request harder to fulfill and thus less likely to be accepted.

Examples of emails and effort that the sender ought to put in include:

When requesting a meeting, put in the effort of listing workable times. This makes accepting the request as simple as picking a workable option rather than the recipient needing to create that list of options.
When requesting to work with a professor, put in the effort of finding the overlap in their expertise and your experience and interest.
When requesting anything put in the effort to make it clear, skimmable, with questions answered, and so on – essentially everything else listed on this page.

The more like a favor the request is, the more important it becomes for the requester to put in effort. The more effort the sender puts in, the less investment is needed from the recipient and the smaller and more doable the favor becomes.

Topical quoting

While it is often good to shoot for 2-message threads, some topics anticipate a large discussion. In email discussions, help maintain clear focus and context using small, topical quotes of previous messages.

Many email clients default to quoting the entire message they are replying to, with the client hiding similar quotes from others to streamline the display of the resulting message thread. However, different clients quote differently, so unless everyone on a thread uses the same client these automated quotes quickly become unwieldy. Avoid lengthy automatic quoting.

Quoting nothing can work, but can also lose context. More often, quoting just a few words or lines of a previous message can provide the relevant context and enable short, succinct, and clear replies without worrying about the quote-of-a-quote-of-a-quote mess that some messages otherwise get.