Email Length: Should You Actually Be Writing Longer Emails?
E-mail ushered out the art of letter writing — and, even cursive writing, to some extent.
Instead of pages-long, handwritten letters that take weeks to arrive by post, we’re well into world of brief, online interactions that one academic speculates will soon render the most basic punctuation item, the period, obsolete.
Brevity is so key that the Oxford Dictionaries word of the year in 2015 wasn’t actually a word, but this emoji: ?
Its official title is the “face with tears of joy” emoji. It beat out a short list of eight actual words and phrases, including refugee, on fleek and lumbersexual.
But in the world of online communications, where the average number of business emails sent and received daily is 122, what is better when it comes to email length:
A long, detailed message or a short, quick exchange?
Think you know the answer? Read on, because you just might change your mind.
The case for long emails
Cal Newport is a computer science professor at Georgetown University, the author of So Good They Can’t Ignore You and Deep Work, and the face behind the Study Hacks Blog. Newport recently wrote about the benefits of writing longer emails than most of us are probably used to typing.
With those 122 emails you’re probably sending and receiving each day, you’re paying a bigger price than you realize. It comes in the form of lots of disruptions during your work day as notifications pop up on your computer or your smartphone constantly buzzes or dings beside you with every new message in your inbox.
Newport challenges accepted email length etiquette. He argues that these constant distractions force you to shift your attention from the task at hand to reading and responding to the new email. That back-and-forth between tasks can constantly reduce your cognitive capacity at work, he writes.
So, how could writing longer emails help fix this? At first, it seems counterintuitive, right?
But often, short, zippy emails simply encourage more conversation, Newport argues. For example:
Email #1: Do you want to meet to discuss next week’s presentation?
Email #2: Yes! Would Wednesday or Thursday be OK?
Email #3: Wednesday is tough. I have meetings all day. Thursday afternoon is still open. What time are you thinking?
Email #4: Early afternoon I’m out for a lunch with the boss, but could do anywhere between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. Shall we book one of the board rooms?
And on, and on, and on it goes.
Instead, Newport says, taking the time to write a so-called process-centric response to that first question can eliminate some of that brain-sucking back and forth that will otherwise happen.
What does a process-centric reply look like? Well, it would address the basic questions that you could anticipate still need to be answered. For example:
Email #1: Do you want to meet to discuss next week’s presentation?
Email #2: Yes! I’m available Wednesday (except for a meeting 12 p.m. to 1 p.m.) and Thursday (except for a meeting 12 p.m. to 2 p.m.). If neither of those work, give me a call at 555-5555 and we can coordinate schedules. If one of those does work, let me know and I’ll book us a boardroom and the projector and send you the details.
Newport provides a similar example of a process-centric reply on his blog.
In a nutshell: You can reduce the length of the overall exchange by writing longer, more helpful emails. And as Newport points out, that comes with its own reward:
“If you respond in this manner, your occasional inbox visits might take more time, but in-between these sessions, you’ll be left blissfully and productively free of the necessity to continually check back in to keep non-process centric threads proceeding at a socially acceptable pace.”
— Cal Newport
The case for short emails
Of course, that’s not the only opinion on how to write incredibly effective emails. There is a camp that makes a strong case for keeping things short and sweet in e-communications.
Boomerang did some research last year to help its users determine what helps them get a response to the emails they send (and, in contrast, what mistakes they make in crafting emails that lessen their odds of a response).
One thing they focused on: email length. Emails between 50 and 125 words received responses at least 50 percent of the time, according to their findings.
It dropped significantly for shorter emails — 10-word notes only received responses 36 percent of the time.
But the drop wasn’t as significant for longer emails — 200-word communications still received responses 48 percent of the time.
But, it was a different story for much longer emails. People responded less than 35 per cent of the time to emails that were 2,500 words.
Based on these findings, if you want to use word count to increase your odds of a response, it may be best to stick to anywhere from 50 to 125 words per message.
The middle ground
Now does that mean you should always write super-long, time consuming emails — or that you should always stick to ultra-short texts and cut yourself off after about 100 words?
Well, the answer’s never that simple. Luckily, there’s a common ground for email length best practices to be found between the two methods that helps you make the best of both schools of thought.
Take a second look at the previous process-centric reply example:
Email #1: Do you want to meet to discuss next week’s presentation?
Email #2: Yes! I’m available Wednesday (except for a meeting 12 p.m. to 1 p.m.) and Thursday (except for a meeting 12 p.m. to 2 p.m.). If neither of those work, give me a call at 555-5555 and we can coordinate schedules. If one of those does work, let me know and I’ll book us a boardroom and the projector and send you the details.
Did you notice that’s just 60-something words?
So, it’s possible to do both: write process-centric replies that eliminate the need for e-communication back and forth and the brain drain that goes along with that, and keep those emails in the length sweet spot of 50-125 words to get more responses.
It’s a simple but effective way to reduce distractions and get more work done.
