[junto]

One of my bosses had a good way of dealing with emails. He would only write one single short replies.

No "Dear/Hello Blah", no sign off, just one single terse sentence that was straight to the point.

He detested my wordy, time laboured and well formatted emails that looked like letters. He had a point.

He treated email like a messenger application, whereas many of us still see it as an electronic replacement for the physical letter. Once you see the difference the time savings are huge.

[xamuel]

Each minute writing deserves at least two minutes deleting.

[jonathonf]

One tactic I use for opening emails is to write the question or point in the subject line (e.g. not "Meeting" but "Today's meeting is at 10:00 in 94a").

For the majority of situations this means easier comprehension/scanning and zero redundancy. It also provides good practice for anything that needs more than a single line.

For longer emails I also like to put a summary at the top, then an expanded details below as necessary, and make sure each paragraph starts a new point or item.

[ryandrake]

This style breaks down when you ask three distinct questions, and the boss (who's so busy he can't even form sentences) simply responds "YES". Now you're guessing. Yes to everything? Yes to only the last question? Now more E-mails are needed and nobody wants that.

[frahs]

I think you're confusing being terse with being bad at communicating.

Original comment isn't talking about giving useless answers, they are talking about removing flowery language from emails and keeping them as short as possible while still giving enough info.

[softawre]

I also learned to be succinct early in my career, when I emailed a VP a wordy mess and he gave me this important advice.

Every word you type costs the company money, compounded by how many people see the email. Make your words count.

[dennisgorelik]

In the situation with 3 questions he can answer: 1) Yes. 2) Yes. 3) No.

Or he can answer: "Let's do XYZ." and ignore two other points. That would hint that one email should cover one topic to keep things simple.