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A manager in Chicago said my work emails were too long and I argued with her for 20 minutes
Back in 2019 I was writing these giant emails, like 8 paragraphs just to ask one thing. She pulled me aside and said "I stop reading after the second line." At first I thought she was being rude, but she was right. Now I put the ask in the first sentence and bold it, then a couple short lines of context under it. My reply rate went way up and I stopped getting those "can you clarify?" responses. Has anyone else had a boss call out their writing style like that?
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jamesf411mo ago
The "two line" rule isn't really about length though. I had a boss in 2020 who wrote these long emails too but they worked because the ask was always up top. Same eight paragraphs, but the first line said "need your approval on X by Friday." What killed me was burying the point at the bottom, so people got confused and asked questions that were already answered in paragraph six. Your fix works because you moved the ask to the front, not because short is automatically better. A long email with the point first beats a short one where you have to hunt for what they want.
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