PhotoCredit: Oleg Magni https://www.pexels.com/search/candy/
I came across this article from The Atlantic on how to email. The author, James Hamblin, sums up email 'etiquette' perfectly stating, “An email is an imposition on a person’s time.”
Austin Kleon takes this further, assessing whether you are likely crazy based on the length of your email. Kleon is fantastic, if you don't know his work you should check him out.
Email is freeform. It allows you to rave on as if your audience has nothing better to do. Email is not a text message. Or a tweet for that matter. And maybe that's part of the problem. Texts are inherently short and to the point. And most emails would be infinitely improved with a limitation of 140 characters.
Making this worse are the emails that bury the lead. It’s annoying enough in a news article. There should be no doubt from the first sentence what you wish your audience to action or consider.
I can feel you nodding as I write this.
The sad thing is that Hamblin's article is circa-2016. We should know better by now. We don’t need five images at the bottom of our email signature. We don’t need an email signature. Mine is my name and my cellphone number. Edit what you write, get four paragraphs down to four lines. Get four lines down to 4 words (I double dog dare you).
We have abused email for long enough. Be the change you want to see in the world.