HIGHLIGHT #3 | 129
HOW CAN WE MAKE E-MAILS MORE READABLE? THE ROLE OF SPACE
I then wrote to the authors of a further 22 e-mails that I then received
suggesting that they applied these rules. The first of these replied:
Hi Jim,
I think that these are sound and sensible suggestions! Your
version is much easier to read and
means that you
could grasp whether email is likely to be relevant or not
much more quickly!
Thanks!
Similar comments were received from others:
I think this is a really good system for short e-mails.
I will try to adopt these principles. It can be hard under time
pressure though.
Thanks Jim – that does help legibility.
but 7 did not reply.
All in all I judged 9 of these 15 respondents to be positive and 6 to
be critical. Indeed, one wrote:
Where does a pedant go to get more water?
The main criticisms were that the revised text could look disjointed
and again two respondents said that the rules were obvious and
that they did this anyway. One preferred a new line-space for
paragraphs only – without separating sentences within paragraphs.
What was particularly interesting was that there were few, if any,
replies from university administrators (or their assistants) at Keele
that produce e-mail text like this:
Late submission of assessed work submitted at the first
attempt (or for re-assessment at the first attempt), and
received within seven calendar days after the submission
deadline without valid extenuating circumstances, will
be limited to the module pass mark (typically 40% for an
undergraduate programme and 50% for a postgraduate
programme) or qualifying mark if higher. This clause does
not apply to re-assessment.
Here we need re-writing as well as re-spacing…
A snag
Finally, it became apparent through discussions with respondents
that some of the layouts of the e-mails that we send and receive
depend upon which system(s) we are using to send and download