Mike Industries

Let it be known: I think Mike is nuts.

And oh yeah: FIRST!

Nice.
I’m on board.

Brilliant.
-
Q: Why is this response 2 sentences or less?
A: http://two.sentenc.es

Interesting idea and would definitely work well for a lot of email. I don’t think it would help those of us who handle a lot of support email though.

I used to try and keep my responses as short as possible but later found that spending the extra few sentences (and minutes) saved me three or four follow up emails down the line.

Really effing good idea. I just might give it a whirl.

Why not just answer with a short response. Do you really think that knowing why changes the effect on the reader?

Simple and Elegant.

Talk about GTD too .. no more 4 hour battles with the email monster.

Bravo

So trying this. The challenge of writing what I want to say in 5 sentences is going to make replying to email a bit more interesting in the short term, though we’ll see how this helps those action item emails I leave sitting in the inbox, desperate for attention…

I am lazy.. so this wouldn’t come as a big shock to all the people who email me anyway. :D

I am so disappointed that six.sentenc.es doesn’t have some rude remark about being too long a response.

Nice.

Personally, I’ve always loved this quote by Samuel Johnson: Read over your compositions, and wherever you meet with a passage which you think is particularly fine, strike it out. Same principle, different approach.

Definitely trying this.

Fantastic! I will be using this as until now I too have replied only to the emails that require quick responses. Seeing my inbox shrink dramatically after only a few minutes made me feel productive, but I always knew that tackling those last few will take a while, as a result - I have 30 important, but overdue emails in my inbox… damn.

Thanks Mike!

I do not receive 100-400 e-mails a day. As such, the following opinion does not count. So if you do not want to read my whole comment, then read the following quote on brevity from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, chuckle, then move on to the next comment.

Lord Polonius:
This business is well ended.
My liege, and madam, to expostulate
What majesty should be, what duty is,
Why day is day, night night, and time is time,
Were nothing but to waste night, day and time.
Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit,
And tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes,
I will be brief: your noble son is mad:
Mad call I it; for, to define true madness,
What is’t but to be nothing else but mad?
But let that go.

Brevity for the sake of brevity, is an offense to clarity and no savings in the end.

Pet Peeve: People who do not read e-mail for comprehension. I put in extra effort to be concise but clear when writing e-mail. A first draft may take two minutes and editing another eight.

A grammatically correct, spell checked and refined message that has been attentively edited to avoid miscommunication is better than an abrupt message that requires an e-mail thread of context and clarification.

However, I have worked with a few people who demonstrate a complete disregard for communication—their responses including questions that where directly answered in my original e-mail. Their “responses” are often cryptic in themselves and as a result waste even more time.

At best, sentenc.es will demand too much compression of the writer. Clarity and completeness will suffer. At worst, it will provide an excuse to the lazy reader. Skimming e-mail and smashing out five sentences with the camouflage of the signature: “See my five.sentenc.es” policy.

For the well intentioned, sentenc.es will demand as much or more time of a respondent if they strive to reply in total to the concept(s) of the original message.

The example you provided, “…list 10 tips…” is an unusual example, in that it does not represent most e-mail. Does the average e-mail user really receive that much fan mail?

In the end, isn’t the best advice to transfer communication that requires lengthy response to verbal exchange or IM rather than e-mail? And when verbal exchange is inappropriate, as in the case of fan mail where you have little personal investment, it would be better to write a blog post or FAQ and redirect the sender? Or, at worst, author a polite form message that can be sent to correspondents not in your address book.

In the end, sentenc.es will work well in the context of a tight team of coworkers who all agree to the policy and can choose to walk across the office or switch to chat when the five sentence limit is inappropriately brief.

As someone in the same boat (just not to the same degree), I sincerely hope this is an idea which catches on. Keep us posted!

I don’t know, Mike. It’s sometimes tougher to distill the message I’m trying to convey. Mark Twain said it best:

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

Mike, you have a good idea here.

One request: the sentenc.es subdomains (e.g. five.sentenc.es) could be worded in a way that’s friendlier for the email recipient. You can assume that anyone going to the subdomains is following a link from an email signature, so you can direct the message at them. As an example, Merlin Mann’s Thanks No site is pretty good.

The general sentenc.es domain should explain what the site is about; the subdomains are free to be directed at email recipients rather than sentenc.es users themselves.

Brilliant.

I’m putting that in my email for 7 days as an experiment to see what other’s responses are.

Oxa Koba, I run a few sites and the mail you refer to as ‘fan mail’ is very frequent. It isn’t always positive ‘fan mail’ as such, but what Mike is getting at is that generally it is a question that took a whole 30 seconds for the sender to write, yet the response might take half an hour or more to write.

As you say, the average email user might not have these issues, but I think that nearly anyone that runs a web site will come across this problem with varying degrees of frequency.

The problem arises because most site owners, myself included, encourage feedback. At first it isn’t a problem and its a bit of an ego boost to see people using your sites. After a while though, its an avalanche. However, you don’t want to discourage this beneficial dialogue between your site (you) and your users.

Jesse C has a good point too, sometimes it takes longer to write something succinct and its easier to babel on a bit in the hopes that your point will come across somehow :)

Great idea. One thing caught my eye, though. Shouldn’t your signature be “five sentences or fewer” to be proper grammar? Meh, it doesn’t matter.

I actually have a different problem where people at my office will need to send me a lot of information to give them a short response, and because they dont want to take the time to type it out, they will call or IM me. Therefore I have to stop what I am doing. Its great when they IM a hey and just say nothing else until I reply. The benefit of email is that is there for me to deal with whenever I can focus on it. Unlike an IM which can be closed without realizing something important is there or a phone call where you may not remember the details an hour later because you were in the middle of working something out. I think everybody needs to just be better at communicating exactly what they need in email and it will save everybodys time. IM has become the major disruption to my work.

What do you do in a situation where common usage is so overwhelming more popular than “correct” usage?

You keep doing web layouts with tables, of course!

:)

Whereas I generally agree that email can go on and on - and for most instances this rule would be very useful - I hope that it is used in moderation. I can see a lot of people flaking out on really important things because they were trying to stay under a sentence limit.

So let’s apply this responsibly.

I think some people are mising the point. This point is not meant to insult the other person; the point is for you to save time.
This, of course, would be an inappropriate rule in response to “what do I do if the baby has an allergic reaction?” or “how do I shut down the reactor?”

I see it as an effort to be more concise, to reduce rambling, and to avoid unnecessary narative emails. I have been revising my emails for years to follow those same rules but this puts a hard limit, when appropriate, on disproportionate responses.

Here is a tip to all of you who left long comments: I didn’t read them. For example: Didn’t read #15, did read Jeff Croft’s. Get it?

Great idea Mike. I’m all for anything that reduces time spent writing emails!

http://seventy-four.sentenc.es doesn’t go anywhere, so I am unable to jump on board yet. :-)

>Shouldn’t your signature be “five sentences or fewer” to be proper grammar?

It depends on what & how you’re measuring. If you’re treating sentences simply as discrete objects (”five cups”), you’d use “fewer” since they’re count nouns. If you’re treating them as containers of textual substance (”five cups of milk”), as Mike’s goal seems to be to keep a lid on the amount of text he sends, you can use “less” since text is a mass noun measured (vaguely) in sentences. A linguistic rationalization, sure, but it beats surrendering to the tide of people who could (grr!) care less about good usage. The five-sentence limit looks like a great idea. I’m going to try to use - oops!

Here is a tip to all of you who left long comments: I didn’t read them. For example: Didn’t read #15, did read Jeff Croft’s. Get it?

Then you just missed out on probably the most insightful and thoughtful comment on this thread so far.

Definitely an idea worth trying out.

Oh, and Croft has totally hit the nail on the head on the “less vs. fewer” issue. If widely-read folks like you lead by example, more people will start to use those words properly. Then maybe you can do something about “its vs. it’s” issue, which way too many otherwise smart people get wrong all the time. ;^)

I’m on the same page as comment #27. I find too often emails and comments ramble on for the sake of the writer. I think it’s good practice to keep emails short and concise. If the recipient needs more information they’ll be more specific about the information they need. The end effect is stating 3 useful points instead of rambling on and making 15.

I agree with you 100% for most cases. I think this kind of communication is better suited for IM conversations, or as you point out, a phone call.

However, I have the opposite problem, in the way I write email. I purposely spend so much time writing emails, so that they are totally clear and complete, that sometimes I probably overwhelm people with too much detail. However, because I realize my emails take longer to write, I ask for short answer replies inline.

Reason is, I find when I fall into the trap that you describe here, and I begin and email conversation this way, both sides end up sending fragments back and forth that require a cat and mouse question and answer chase, in which nothing is accomplished.

I think it’s the responsibility of the person initiating the conversation to get all the info out in the open up front, so that the respondent can reply quickly and efficiently, bringing the correspondence to a quick, productive end.

Otherwise, use IM, which is better suited to this illiterate type of correspondence. I mean it’s called eMAIL.

Nice idea overall.

What do you do in a situation where common usage is so overwhelming more popular than “correct” usage?

You are not common. You are a good writer. So you champion correct usage. You wouldn’t start flipping your apostrophes or saying anyways just because it’s popular.

-
Q: Where is the comment?!
A: http://no.sentenc.es

(Perfect for when one has nothing to add on the subject, or say, when someone’s asking for a loan over email. Please add the subdomain, Mike ;-)

I do that too! I agree it makes much more sense. But in that case we don’t have to start a resistance movement, we can simply chalk it up to European style.

It seems that some of the readers here don’t understand the heart of the principle at work here. We actually practice similar techniques and using instant messaging as well, wherever we can. For us this type of approach helps conversation participants get on the same more quickly and move on to problem solving or execution more quickly.

@Frederick
I don’t think anyone’s doubting the utility of this. Who said we can’t have a bit of fun along the way ;-)

Mike, you are a legend.

I have decided I am on board simply for the fact that it may stop people starting a conversation with “I have a question”.

Then maybe you can do something about “its vs. it’s” issue, which way too many otherwise smart people get wrong all the time.

And while you are at it, you can try to cure the world of the “your / you’re” problem

I personally
Much prefer the haiku form
When answering fans.

That’s brilliant - I’m definitely coming on board with it! (It’s also being sent round some of my prolifically e-verbose colleagues…)

80% of e-mail my e-mail is internal, my colleagues use it as a messaging system. We are trying to get them to use the intranet, and I will try this strategy to as another way of encouraging that.

My point is the old journalists joke: “3000 words - no problem, by lunch, 300 words, harder, give me a couple of days, 30 words? Next month”.

Telegram from publisher to Mark Twain: NEED TWO PAGE SHORT STORY TWO DAYS

Response from Mark Twain to publisher: NO CAN DO TWO PAGES TWO DAYS STOP CAN DO THIRTY PAGES TWO DAYS STOP NEED THIRTY DAYS TO DO TWO PAGES

That about sums up my thoughts on the matter.

And even that isn’t quite the whole truth. I have mail which has been languishing for almost two years in my inbox (and yes, I do intend to reply!) – the problem isn’t mail which requires me to write a lot, it’s mail (or a thread of mail) that requires me to read a lot, carefully, and ponder it for a while, before I can reply.

Oh yeah – concerning “fan mail”:

If it’s a worthwhile question, don’t fob it off with a token three-sentence reply that provides no insight. You might as well just say “sorry too much work” and move on – that isn’t any less helpful.

Rather, I’d say, if you feel compelled to say something about it, then write your response on your weblog. Send a link to the post as the reply. Email is ephemeral; weblog posts can be pointed to again and again, so your investment in them pays dividends.

If you receive similar-ish questions a lot and you do this consistently, you will soon have a body of posts that you can point to in response to a large variety of questions. This conserves as much of your time as a policy of being brief and provides people who mail you with a much more in-depth and insightful treatment of their question(s).

And if it’s really too much work to reply at length, then say so. Possibly throw in a bone à la “but I find your question(s) interesting and may write about it on the weblog when I find the time” – it’s true at that point, after all.

I’ve always hated getting tiny e-mails that take forever to answer. I’ve almost started doing this without even thinking about it, cutting this email short here, not writing enough there. I think I like this new idea, though.

I’m in.

Quicker and potentially less confusing solution: Add this to the bottom of all your emails (even ones from your PC):

—-
Sent from my BlackBerry

(or iPhone, Nokia, etc.) Pretty much everyone knows that most people don’t write long on mobile devices. It gives the added advantage of making it seem like you live a life of mystery and adventure, always on the go.

Okay, so maybe it’s lying… meh. ;-)

-Russ

Very good idea. Plausible and effective.

Email should be concise and direct. I don’t even read the “shared emails,” ie: “Photos from the BBQ!” or “Check out this link.”

If you’re just sharing something with a bunch of recipients, post it on your blog, and we’ll catch it via RSS. These days its so easy to start a link or photo blog.

Sorry, but while reading your post, I was reminded of the skit from Spinal Tap… (I’m paraphrasing of course)

Nigel: “You see, most blokes will be playing at 10. You’re on 10, all the way up, all the way up…Where can you go from there? Nowhere. What we do, is if we need that extra push over the cliff…Eleven. One louder”

Filmmaker: “Why don’t you just make 10 louder and make 10 be the top number, and make that a little louder?”

Nigel: “These go to 11.”

So, if email is a problem for you, why not just reply with the least amount of text that is possible? Why 5 sentences? Why not 4? Or 6? Heck, if the email requires a response that would be longer than a couple of sentences, why not - **gasp** - pick up the phone?

Perhaps if you didn’t spend all day blogging about how little time you have to deal with e-mails, you’d have more time to reply to e-mails.

genius. Sign me up …

No time to respond to e-mails, but:

* Has set up a website (and web 2.0 domain!) to explain personal e-mail policy (like anyone gives a toss?)
* Has blogged about personal e-mail policy (like anyone gives a toss?)

Damn - i think this article has reached new levels of self-importance and pretentiousness! Congratulations! :-D

It’s a good idea, but I echo the points above about still being courteous to the sender, and not forcing brevity for brevity’s own sake. Know when to break your own rules.

On that subject! As a European (a Brit, in fact, we invented the damn language, etc etc), I do not agree with always leaving punctuation out from the quotation (incidentally, that’s another nit-picking point; “quote” is a verb, not a noun). Even in the FontFeed article:

“If the quote has a point after it, like a complete sentence, it’s included in the quote.”

As a rule of thumb, if your sentence would make sense without the quotation marks no internal punctuation is needed. However, if your sentence revolves around what is in the quotation marks (for example, direct speech or an extended quotation), it requires punctuation at the end.

Maybe this seems petty, but precise language is very important; not so much in these particular cases, but there are plenty of examples where slippage of usage leads to serious misunderstanding - so precision is a desirable general policy. Just think of the myriad managers in the world who actually believe ‘actionable’ is an intellectual-sounding synonym for ‘doable’.

Apologies for the length. http://five.paragrap.hs/

MS Word has a little known built-in feature that will save you even more time in crafting your five sentence responses. Type

=rand(1)

and press Enter. Hope this helps!

I am reminded of the quote (variously attributed to Samuel Johnson, Mark Twain, and George Bernard Shaw, but apparently originating with Pascal) “I did not have time to write you a short letter, so I wrote you a long one instead.”

Reminds me rather strongly of Strunk & White’s direction to omit needless words.

This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Good stuff, Mike. (:

(Lastly, Hee! @ Croft.)

I would suggest that those that can’t stand the kitchen get out of the heat. Glad to see I am not the only one who sometimes forgets to answer.

The Old Fogey Rides Again.

I think this is a great idea, and I think I could keep most responses under 5 sentences, but what about when you’re copying and pasting content into an email?

I often send error messages, or code snippets through email, but I suppose that is fair game in this system because they do not require a response.

So what about cases (however rare they may be) where someone sends you an email that took them an hour to write? Perhaps you asked someone a question and they, having not read this post, sent you a well-thought, and thorough reply?

Would you then show them the courtesy of a lengthly reply? Do those situations arise infrequently enough to make this viable, or would you still defer to your 5-sentence rule in hopes of spreading the word? Or perhaps those types of email only come from personal friends or family for which a phone conversation would alleviate the need to respond?

@ Jeff Junatas: Maybe…but maybe not? For your sake, I went back and read the comment I initially skipped over and still stand by my point and the point I think Mike is trying to make here: brevity and context can (and should) co-exist harmoniously.

All good design (and writing is a form of communication design) functions expertly within imposed constraints. Sure, there are exceptions but when are there not? The point I was trying to make with my initial comment is that this method simply works for the most obvious and logical reasons.

Mike, absolutely; context is everything. Probably the example you gave earlier was simply not the best choice - according to accepted rules (I believe in any English-speaking country), as direct speech that would definitely have required internal punctuation.

I’ll be interested to hear how your experiment goes, particularly regarding the reactions of people you correspond with. Looking forward to a follow-up post!

Excellent Idea, mike. I like your thinking.

However practical this solution is, basically you are “under-responding” to your email and adding an “I am overloaded/lazy” disclaimer at the end…

On the other hand, if it works…

Didn’t Oscar Wilde say something like, “I apologize for the length of this letter. I didn’t have time to make it shorter.”

I think he’s right. Writing concisely is a lot harder than doing the initial brain dump.

So I wonder how much time this really saves for the sender?

But it’s nice for the recipient. I’d rather not read the version 1 brain dump. I want version 2+. Where they edited it down to the few points they really want to make, and make economically.

You have solved my email problem.
I’m on board completely.
Thanks a lot Mike.
I’m going to tell all my friends.
Yay.

“Je n’ai fait celle-ci plus longue que parceque je n’ai pas eu le loisir de la faire plus courte.”
-Blaise Pascal

(Translation: “I have only made this letter rather long because I have not had time to make it shorter.”)

Your new found brevity will require far more of your time than you realize. That’s not to say that your plan isn’t without merit. It’s just naive.

Writing less takes sooo long, if you are serious about it :-)

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I’ve written a long one instead.” — Mark Twain

A bit like designing a good interface, taking away stuff until there is nothing left to remove without losing functionality.

Quite hard!

Mike wrote:

> Who knew this blog had so many Mark Twain claqueurs!?

The problem being that Twain didn’t say or write it nor did Oscar Wilde or the other half dozen people to whom this quote is often attributed. They were all paraphrasing Pascal.

This is where separate the pseudo-intellectual from the literate.

Maybe we could all benefit from a nerdy web policy on meetings too:

fifteen.minut.es

The Problem
Meetings are long and sometimes it takes lots of mental work to concentrate and try to contribute to a discussion for long periods of time.

The Solution
Leave the meeting after 15 minutes no matter what.

fifteen.minut.es is a personal policy that all meetings will be left after 15 minutes regardless of importance, topic, or who else is attending. I’ll be at the meeting for 15 minutes. It’s that simple

Just drop this card on the table as you walk out the door.

Yeah but the Twain quote is shorter. Therefore Pascal should apologize for writing such a long apology for writing such a long letter. Hypocrite.

Anyway, I think we all hate when people write junk like “at this point in time” instead of “now”. A five sentence limit is a good start but we also need intra-sentence brevity.

Apologies, but this strikes me as incredibly rude. I would be a bit bothered to have my friends and associates take up this policy, and I would feel quite rude to implement it myself. I’m not sure why, but that’s my impression.

However, you do have me thinking of implementing (without explicitly telling anyone) a similar policy.

I think the problem I have with this idea is that it treats everyone, and all email, equally, and real conversation doesn’t work like that. So I’m thinking I should assign each message an “importance” (mentally, most likely) to decide how much of a response it deserves.

In other words, A message from a good friend asking how to set up their new computer might merit a long response, but a “Hi, any advice for new writers?” from someone I don’t know would get five sentences or less.

I realize this may seem rude too, but it’s less rude than my current policy (”This looks like it would take an hour to write a response, so I won’t respond at all.”)

P. S. The Twain quote may be shorter, but Twain never said it. He and Wilde get credit for many quotations for which the original source is hard to find or hard to translate.

If I got an e-mail like that (complete with the Q&A), I’d probably think you’re an asshole.

I think it’s totally valid… Life is short and while you want to share as much as you can there is only so much time in a day. I’ve tended to just not even respond which is worse. But it’s not fair if the “easy ones” come before the “important ones”. I’m guilty.

2 Sentences
As a fan of Virginia Woolfe, I am all for this as it could help revive the neglected art of writing longer sentences with full ideas and logical connectors.
Mike, in terms of responding to acquaintances and routine inquiries, a policy like this may also help to you think through what you really need to say to this person and what might be better for an article or blog entry.

To Mike, or others who have commented here:

Does anyone know of an email program that provides
a view of all the emails in the inbox just like the
view of all the comments here. That is, the view
would permit the user to scroll through the complete
text of all the emails in the inbox—or, if that is
too big a scroll, say 50 emails at a time. Even better,
in this view, each email would have its own delete
button.

Suppose I want to pare down my inbox. For a typical
email, I won’t be able to decide whether to toss it until
I at least glance at it. That means I have to open
the email. For only one email, this is fine. But for going
through many, the repeated opens are too slow.
That is why I am looking for a view like the one above.

(For all I know, it may be in Apple’s Mail application,
but I don’t think so.)

Thank you,

Roger Purves

A social networking type one might be an idea:

five.sentence.rep.ly

For myspace/bebo etc.

Some people seem to think that this is a manifesto that you will have to live the rest of your emailing life by. There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer, but this is a good option to draw on *when needed*.

Use common sense, if it’s a choice between:

“I’ll get around to this when I have 25 minutes” (and never will)

or

“I’ll fire off a quick note so that they know I’m not ignoring them but I’ll apologies and explain my brevity”

… well, the latter is surely preferable?

Here’s what I’m doing: I’m adding it to my list of signatures that I can use on Apple Mail. It is not the default signature for any of the accounts, but for any mail account I can, if I wish, change to that signature footer. It might mean replying to those emails that would otherwise languish/fester.

well… I really have to say that you cought me with the idea. I will give it a shot. Though I think if you’d have given me that short reply you used in your example I’d have thought “what a jerk” :)

thank you!
Robert

I’m certainly liking the idea. Frankly, it works for both ends of the equation: as an email reader, my eyes start to glaze the moment my “smart scrollbar’ indicates a tome rather than something pithy. All-in-all, a great idea.

Mind, I have a cynical suspicion this whole gig is just so you could use sentenc.es as a domain name ;-)

Mike,
You must be on to something good, given the intensity of the few negative comments. If you aren’t pissing somebody off then you aren’t doing anything interesting.

Great idea.

But considering your reason for this is the time commitment, here’s another: replying by email with a voice mail attachment.

http://www.hawkwings.net/2006/01/04/ivoicemail-audio-clips-in-mailapp/

A very interesting idea. As some have noted, it is not really feasible for people whose terms of employment require longer emails. However, I think a compromise approach might work (and am going to try it myself):

For all “non-critical” email, use the Five-Sentences approach. For those emails that simply require a more-comprehensive solution, craft the response in a word-processor, and attach it to a Five-Sentences reply.

In almost all cases where a more-comprehensive reply is required, there are good business reasons for retaining a file-copy, anyway: It is the skeleton of a design-document, or a probably-reusable set of customer-support instructions, or some such. A response that you simply must invest significant time in should look as “good” and professional as possible, anyway. The presentation tools, including both spell-checking and grammar-suggestions, are generally more-mature in word-processors than in email clients, anyway.

Roger Purvee, I don’t know of a system that will allow you to scroll through all unread messages, but Pine/Alpine with IMAP and a fast connection is pretty comparable, using keyboard shortcuts to move back and forward between messages.