Before you write anything

Should this be an email? A question needing three exchanges is a two minute call. A difficult message about performance or money is a conversation. A decision needing several people is a meeting. Email suits a record, a message across time zones, something with an attachment, and anything the recipient needs to refer back to.

Who actually needs this? Copying six people so that nobody can say they were not told is how everybody's inbox became unusable. Address it to the person who must act and copy only those who genuinely need to know.

What do you want to happen? Write that down before the first sentence. Most unclear emails are unclear because the writer had not decided what they wanted. If you cannot name the action or the decision you need, you are not ready to write.

One email, one subject. Three unrelated matters in one message means two of them are forgotten, and there is no way to file it.

Think about when it arrives. A message sent at eleven at night to a team member reads as an expectation, whatever you intended. Schedule it for the morning.

Consider your reader's context. A busy client reads on a phone, between two other things, and decides within a few seconds whether to deal with it now or later. Everything in the next lesson follows from that one fact.