Week 5: Length and Structure#
A reader judges the shape of an email before they judge its content.
What this lecture covers#
- shape as a signal read before content
- why long-and-structured can beat short-and-rambling
- a composite email that buries its own ask
- fixing position before fixing length
Shape is information#
Before reading a word, a reader sees: how long the paragraphs are, whether there’s a visible ask, whether it ends or trails into a signature.
Shape tells the reader how much of their time this will cost, before content ever gets the chance to.
Long-and-structured can beat short-and-rambling.
The counterintuitive part#
A long email organised around one clear ask reads faster than a short one that rambles toward it.
Shorter, clearly structured emails tend to get read further and answered faster than long, undifferentiated ones. Worth testing on your own inbox, not a word count to write to.
Predict, then watch#
Before the next slide: a five-paragraph email, ask buried at the very end. Predict where a skimming reader stops reading. Then check.
Five paragraphs of company background, market context, and personal introduction, before the actual request arrives as a single clause at the end of paragraph four:
From: [Sender]
To: [Recipient]
Subject: Introduction and a bit about what we’re building
…so if you had a few minutes to chat that would be amazing.
A reader skimming this sees an unbroken block with no visible ask, which is the signal to stop, before the ask is even reached.
The fix isn’t cutting at random#
Move the ask to where a skimming reader will actually see it.
Then cut whichever paragraph turns out not to change the reader’s decision if it’s removed, which is usually most of them.
From: [Sender]
To: [Recipient]
Subject: Introduction and a bit about what we’re building
Could you spare 15 minutes this week to look at something we’re building? The ask comes first, because that’s what you actually need to decide on. I’ll explain what it does and why I thought of you in two sentences below.
Same request, moved to the first line. Everything the original buried in paragraph four now has to justify itself against an ask the reader has already seen.
Look this up#
Find the longest cold email in your own inbox. Time how long it takes you to locate the actual ask. If it’s more than a few seconds, that delay is the failure this week names.
Recap#
- shape is read before content, independent of what the email says
- long-and-structured can beat short-and-rambling
- fix the ask’s position first, then cut what doesn’t move the decision