[baddspellar]

The author goes too far.

Sometimes emails need to be longer than 5 sentences because they need to convey more than 5 sentences of information. I can't tell you how many 1-2 sentence e-mails I receive every week where I have to ask the sender what they're talking about. This is a waste of my time.

If an e-mail is very long, however, it should include a brief introductory paragraph summarizing its main point and action items so the recipient can figure out whether or not he/she actually needs to read the whole thing. Sometimes the main point and action item summary is enough.