What Your Emails Say Before You Do

Imagine an event planner named Leila Mansour who meets Mrs. Whitlock about a lunch for 60 in June. It is for her mother’s 80th birthday, in her mother’s garden. The meeting goes well, and Mrs. Whitlock asks Leila to put what they discussed in an email. Leila writes it that night, and she is pleased about the job. “It was lovely to meet you this morning! I’m so excited about this party. I’ve been thinking about the garden all afternoon.” Then two paragraphs on how she works: the site visit, the planning calls, the vendor meetings, the week-before walk-through. The fee is in the fourth paragraph. The email ends, “Can’t wait to get started!”

Mrs. Whitlock reads the first paragraph on her phone and forwards the email to her husband with one word, “Thoughts?” Mr. Whitlock was not at the meeting. He opens it in the car between two appointments, and what he reads first is how excited a stranger is. He reads a paragraph about planning calls, and he stops. He writes back to his wife, “What does she charge?” Mrs. Whitlock has to go and find the fee, and she notices that she had to. That weekend her husband mentions the planner his partner used. That planner’s email is six sentences long, and the fee is in the second one. They meet her the following week.

Suppose instead that Leila writes the email for Mr. Whitlock, whom she has not met. The subject line is “The 14th of June, what I would do, and the fee.” The email says, “Dear Mrs. Whitlock, thank you for this morning. For the lunch for 60 on the 14th of June in your mother’s garden, I would plan the day, run it, and bring my own team for the setting up and the clearing. My fee is $11,000. The garden is the right place for it, and the long border will be in flower by then. If you would like to go ahead, I will send the agreement on Monday and come to see the garden with you that week. Kind regards, Leila Mansour.” Mr. Whitlock reads it at a red light. He writes back, “Fine by me.” Mrs. Whitlock writes to Leila on Monday.

Leila planned the same lunch at the same fee both times. What changed was who the email was written for. The first was written for Mrs. Whitlock, who had been in the meeting and liked her. The second was written for the person Mrs. Whitlock would send it to, who had not, and who had 30 seconds. Here is why the second reader matters so much, and what an email written for them looks like.

The person you wrote to is often not the only one who reads it

A wealthy household decides together, and most of the deciding happens after you leave. The person who met you carries your email home. The husband, the wife, or the adult child who stayed home reads it cold. Above a certain level of wealth, an assistant reads the email first, and the client sees what the assistant passes on. So the reader who decides is often someone who was not in the room and cannot hear your voice. They read your email on a phone between two appointments.

The course’s test for every email is that second reader, and here is the reason. A sentence that made sense to the client, because the two of you had talked about it, means nothing to the husband. The client might forgive a paragraph of excitement, because she liked you in person. The husband sees that paragraph first, and it is all he knows of you. The fee at the bottom of a long email is the fee he does not reach. So the email is written to the client and for the person she will send it to. The test is one question. Could the husband, or the assistant, read this cold and know what is being proposed, what it costs, and what happens next?

The writer hears a tone the reader cannot

In 2005, Justin Kruger of New York University and three colleagues published five experiments on tone in email. Without a voice, a face, or a gesture, tone is hard to get across in an email. People do not know how hard. In the experiments, the people writing believed their tone had come through better than it had. The reason, the last two experiments suggest, is that the writer hears the sentence the way they meant it. A sentence meant as a joke sounds like a joke to the person who typed it. The reader did not type it, so the reader hears something else.

Here is what that means for Leila’s first email. She wrote “I’m so excited about this party” and heard warmth, because she felt it. Mr. Whitlock heard a stranger selling. Neither of them was wrong about what they heard. The step from the experiments to the car is the course’s own. It rests on one fact about the second reader, which is that they have nothing of you except the words. So the only warmth that reaches them is the warmth in the words about them. The excitement about yourself gets in the way.

Forty million emails: the ones that got answered were short, plain, and a little warm

Boomerang makes software that reminds people when an email has not been answered. In 2016 the company looked at 40 million emails its customers had sent, and reported which ones got a reply. Emails of 50 to 125 words got a reply more than half the time. Longer ones got fewer replies, and so did the shortest ones. A 25-word email did about as badly as a 2,000-word one. Emails written at a third-grade reading level got 36% more replies than emails written at a college level. A slightly warm email did about 15% better than a neutral one. Past that, the company found, replies fell off as the warmth went past what would look normal in an email.

These were emails between people in business, not from a planner to a client, and the step is the course’s own. The 25-word email tells you what short means. It does not mean curt, and it does not mean leaving out the fee. Leila’s second email is about 90 words, and all of them are the lunch, the fee, and Monday. The warmth figure tells you how much cheer is enough. One warm sentence is the right amount, and that sentence is about the client’s garden. “I’m so excited,” “I’d absolutely love to,” and “Can’t wait to get started!” are the warmth that goes past normal, and the reply rate fell with them.

An email etiquette writer says one exclamation point is enough

Judith, who writes the email etiquette site Net Manners, posted in August 2026 about the tone a reader hears in an email. “Whether you realize it or not,” she writes, “the other side assumes your tone based on your chosen words, how you use them, how you format them, and your punctuation choices.” Bold text, red text, and a run of exclamation points each add a tone the writer did not choose. Her rule for punctuation is short. “Just one exclamation point or question mark is sufficient.”

She also gives a test before sending. “Would I say this to this person in this way if we were face to face?” If you would not, she writes, do not send it. Measured against this lesson, her test is the right test with the wrong person in it. The client met you face to face, and would hear “I’m so excited” as you meant it. The husband did not. So ask her question about the husband. Would you say this sentence, in this way, to Mr. Whitlock at a red light?

A piano teacher writes to parents knowing any of them can forward it

Wendy Stevens writes for piano teachers on the site ComposeCreate. In 2017 she published seven rules for texting and emailing the parents of her students. One of them is about what happens to an email after it is sent. It is “all too easy for a parent to forward your email to anyone,” she writes. “So if your email is negative, angry, or otherwise unbecoming, you can quickly ruin your own reputation by putting your frustration down in an email. Once it’s in an email or text, you can’t take it back!”

Her first rule points the other way, so the two need to be set side by side. “A flat tone is a negative tone,” she writes. Her example is a mother who texts, with an exclamation mark, that her daughter’s debate team has reached the semi-finals. The mother asks about a different lesson time. The teacher, in a checkout line, replies “No.” Stevens says that mother feels the teacher does not care about her child. The reply she wants instead opens, “Wow! Congratulations to Amanda and her team!” Her second rule follows from the first: exclamation points, she writes, “are crucial to demonstrating enthusiasm” in a text or an email.

Measured against this lesson, her forwarding rule is the lesson’s test seen from the other side. Her flat-tone rule is right about the sentence and wrong about the punctuation. The mother wrote warmly, with an exclamation mark, and a reply at her level is warm too. What makes the longer reply work is that every warm sentence in it is about Amanda. None of it is about how excited the teacher is to teach her. Keep that. The exclamation marks follow the client. That mother used one, so one goes back. Mrs. Whitlock used none, so none do. A one-word reply to a warm message is a different mistake from Leila’s, and the same test catches both. The mother’s husband, reading “No” over her shoulder, sees a teacher who could not spare a sentence.

Why an email that only makes sense in the thread goes wrong

Imagine a travel adviser named Callum Reid who is planning a trip to Kyoto in November for Mrs. Delacroix. The two of them have written 14 emails back and forth. On Tuesday she writes, “I think the second one, and can we make the first night the 9th?” Callum is between two calls, and he replies in the thread. “Yes to the second. I’ll move the first night to the 9th and hold it until Friday. Shall I go ahead and book the car as well?” It is a correct answer, and Mrs. Delacroix understands every word of it.

She forwards it to her assistant, Ms. Park, with “Please confirm with him.” Ms. Park has not seen the thread. “The second” is a hotel somewhere in 14 emails. “The car” could be a transfer or a week of hire. She writes to Callum to ask which hotel, which car, and the price of each. Callum answers the next morning, and the hold expires on Friday while the two of them are still writing. Mrs. Delacroix, when she hears, tells her assistant to find out who her sister uses for Japan.

Callum wrote to the thread, and the thread did not travel with the email. The version that works names what the email is about, so that it stands without the 13 emails above it. “Dear Mrs. Delacroix, the ryokan in Gion, four nights from the 9th of November, is held until Friday at $4,800. The driver from Osaka to the hotel is $380. If Ms. Park confirms by Friday, I will book both.” Ms. Park confirms by lunchtime, because she has everything she needs in one screen.

A short email to a client who wrote at length is not a cold one

When a client wrote you three warm paragraphs, six sentences back can feel like a note sent in answer to a letter. It can also feel like losing what the client warmed to in the meeting.

What the cut removes is the process and the excitement, and neither of those was what the client warmed to. The warmth stays, in the one sentence about the client’s garden. In the short email, that sentence is the one the reader sees. Stevens’s longer reply is warm because it is about the child. Leila’s six sentences are warm because one of them is about the garden. In the Boomerang figures, the 25-word emails did about as badly as the long ones. The course takes that as the floor. A short email with the fee, the date, and one sentence about the client is a letter. It is the long one, with the fee on the second screen, that the husband does not finish.

How to write an email that stands on its own

1. Before you write, name the person the client is likely to forward the email to. It might be a husband or a wife, an adult child, or an assistant. Write the email to the client and for that person. For example, a coach writing to a founder after a first meeting writes it for the founder’s chief of staff. She is the one who will be asked whether to book him.
2. Write the subject line first, and make it say what the email is. The person it is forwarded to sees the subject line before anything else, so “Following up” tells them nothing. For example, a tutor can write, “Math for Isla, Tuesdays from the 3rd: plan and fee.”
3. In the first sentence, say what the email is about in words that stand without the thread. Name the job, the date, and the place. Then answer what the client asked, in the order they asked it. Give the fee, and say what happens next with a date. For example, a home organizer can write, “For the move to the new house on the 20th, my fee for the kitchen and the children’s rooms is $4,200. I will come on Thursday at ten to measure the cupboards.”
4. Take out every sentence about your own excitement or your process, and put in one sentence about the client’s job. The sentence is about their garden, their dog, or their daughter, not about you. For example, a dog walker who wrote, “I’d absolutely love to walk Hugo, I’m so excited!” writes instead, “Hugo will do well on the river route, where the spaniels go.”
5. Set the greeting, the sign-off, and the exclamation marks at the level the client set. Take out the phrases that ask for approval. Then read the email as the person in step 1 would, on a phone, having missed the meeting. If it runs past one screen, cut the process before you cut anything else.
6. Before you send, ask Judith’s question about the person in step 1. Would you say every sentence, in this way, to the husband or the assistant face to face? A remark about the house, another client, or the budget comes out. Once it has been forwarded, it cannot be taken back.
7. When a reply comes from someone other than the client, write that person’s name on the client’s page. Do the same when the client’s reply shows that someone else read your email. The next email is written for them by name.

Next: You will see how to follow up on an email the client has not answered, without chasing them.