Comments on: The Well-Structured Email

By: Jamie Bresner

Jamie Bresner — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 03:42:00 +0000

At my previous job, we had a lot of projects and a lot of clients. To help deal with the flood of emails sent around daily, our email Subject lines were used to convey as much info as possible.

In most cases, the Subject would contain the client code (usually a 3-letter abbreviation), then a project code (each code’s first two digits corresponded with the year of the project), then finally what the message was about, which normally was conveyed with as few words as possible.

The client/project code made it very easy to find past emails without anyone having to file/organize emails in folders.

With the volume of emails I receive at my current job, I’m surprised nobody tries to implement a similar system.

By: Tom Osborne

Tom Osborne — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 02:27:33 +0000

Thanks for sharing your thought process here – lots to take away. I’m curious. Do you follow a similar format for site mail like Basecamp messages?

By: Nathan

Nathan — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 22:20:47 +0000

I don’t like the colors. The language according to some arbitrary color palette is too hard to discern. Bold is enough.

By: David Hobbie

David Hobbie — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 17:13:03 +0000

I agree with John’s comment re: bolding and color. I work for a large law firm, where much of the email ends up being read and replied on mobile devices (mostly Blackberries). Your well-structured emails ought to read well on a blackberry or iPhone as text is broken down into smaller chunks with context and one-line section headers.

How do you enumerate the attachments?

By: Ivan

Ivan — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 15:59:28 +0000

I like these recommendations. Longer email threads get too complicated, with each email requiring an understanding of the previous message’s context. I have to agree with John though, I think bold keywords and excessive use of colour makes email harder to read.

Bottom line is that by clearly stating action items and issues I think you can save people time and avoid miscommunication. If people followed most of the items on your list and avoided using Reply All, the world would be a better place.

Thanks for sharing.

By: John

John — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:43:14 +0000

First thing: fresh approaches to email are sorely needed. Despite its brokenness it’s not going away, and we need these types of discussions. I do have a couple of misgivings though particular to some of your proposals. How does bolding text or using colors rhyme with keeping things plain text? For me, in business communications especially, plain text is important as it ensures consistency, especially when communicating with those outside your company/profession. I also quote extensively in my emails, so things are kept as contextual as possible. But of course, this is only really successful if the recipients continue to observe such protocols.