In Defence of the Long Email

3 points · November 2026edited November 6, 2026 · 9 comments

Everyone says keep it short. The advice is so universal that it has become a kind of manners: the long email is rude, the short one considerate. I want to argue the reverse, at least sometimes.

A short email is easy to write and hard to answer. It leaves the work to the reader: what does she mean, what does he want, which of the three things I could say is the one being asked for. The short email is polite the way a shrug is polite. It costs the sender nothing.

A long email, a real one, is the opposite. It has been thought about. It says what the writer wants, why, what they have already tried, and what they would do if they were you. It takes ten minutes to read and thirty seconds to answer, because the answer is usually yes or the second one.

I am not defending the long email that is long because the writer could not decide what to cut. That is a draft, and sending a draft is a different rudeness. I am defending the email that is long because the subject is, and that treats the reader as someone who would rather read for ten minutes than guess for thirty.

The test is simple. If your long email could be answered in one word, it was the right length. If your short email needs a meeting to interpret, it was the wrong one.

(Edited to fix the paragraph about drafts, which said the opposite of what I meant.)