You will be able to answer three questions about your reader before you write anything longer than a few lines.
Pick the next message you have to write that runs past a few lines, and before you type any of it, answer three questions about the person who will read it. You can do this in your head in under a minute. What you decide sets the opening line, the amount of background, and which parts you leave out.
Start with the reader as a person. Note their role and their seniority, then think about where and how they will read. A message read at a desk can carry more than one read on a phone between meetings, and a reader working in their second language needs plainer sentences.
Next, consider what they already know. A colleague who sat through yesterday's meeting can skip the background. Someone hearing about the project for the first time needs it set out.
Last, and most important, decide what you need from them. It might be approval, a reply, attendance, a change of plan, or only awareness. Whatever the answer is, it becomes your first line. If the honest answer is "nothing, I just want them to know", keep the message short and say that plainly. "No action needed" in the opening line tells a busy reader they can move on without worrying.
Together these are the three questions: who is reading, what they already know, and what you need them to do or decide. They connect to Lesson 1.1, "Say the point first, then explain it", since knowing what you need from the reader gives you your first sentence. They also prepare the ground for lesson 1.2's pyramid, because the reader is the one who decides how deep each branch should go.
Farhan works as an operations executive at a logistics firm in Tuas (an invented example). A shipment of chilled goods is held at the port because the customs permit carries a wrong product code. Two people need to hear about it. Mr Lim supervises the warehouse team that will receive the containers. Ms Tan is the director who manages the client.
Farhan sends both of them one email at 6pm. It explains the permit, the code, the agent he phoned, the new arrival window and the chance of warehouse overtime. Within ten minutes Mr Lim writes back with three questions about the dock schedule. Ms Tan replies the following morning to ask whether she should call the client, though the answer sat in paragraph five.
Every fact in the email was correct. The trouble was the order of work: Farhan wrote the email first and only afterwards thought about who would be reading it.
One set of facts can be cut differently for each reader. A manager reader usually wants the decision and the risk: what is happening, what it means for the client or the budget, and whether they have to step in. A peer reader is the person doing the work, and they want specifics such as which containers, which dock, what time, and who to call. Neither ranks above the other; each needs something different from the same event.
Ms Tan's version fits in three lines. The client's chilled shipment arrives Thursday instead of Wednesday because of a permit error, now corrected. No stock is at risk. Could she tell the client today, or should Farhan? Reading that, she sees the decision in front of her, knows the goods are safe, and can deal with it from her phone.
Mr Lim's version is almost all logistics. He needs the container numbers, the new arrival window, which dock to hold, and an answer on overtime. How the permit error came about is of no use to him.
When two messages aren't possible, for instance because a thread is already running or both people need to see the same record, you can build one email that works for both:
Open with the decision, which here is Ms Tan's three lines. Add a heading or a clear break, for example "Details for the warehouse", and put Mr Lim's material under it. If the detail runs long, move it to an attachment such as a one-page schedule, and add one line in the email telling readers where it is.
Laid out this way, Ms Tan reads the first paragraph and stops, and Mr Lim goes past the opening straight to his section, so neither of them has to search for their part.
Putting a name in front of a request helps as well. "Mr Lim, could you hold Dock 3 from 2pm Thursday?" is difficult to overlook, and it settles whose job it is.
Most people find cutting harder than writing. Once the reader and the request are clear, parts of your draft will turn out to be no help to that person. Go through it a paragraph at a time and check whether each one helps this reader do what you need. Remove the ones that don't, or reduce them to a single clause.
Farhan spent an hour on the phone tracing how the wrong code reached the permit. He is a little proud of that work and would like to put all of it in. For Ms Tan, the whole account becomes one clause: "a permit error, now corrected." If she wants more, she will ask, and Farhan should have the details ready for when she does. The time you spent finding something out does not oblige anyone else to read about it.
Messages in Singapore offices tend to grow long at this stage. Writers fear a short email will look lazy, or that leaving something out will look like hiding it. What happens in practice runs the other way: a short message that answers the reader's question earns more trust, because it shows the writer considered what the reader needs. The three questions also take less time than the follow-up emails they save you from.
Choose one message you have to send this week, ideally one with more than one reader or one going to someone senior to you. Before you open a draft, answer the three questions for that reader, which is what the activity below asks you to do.
Choose one message you have to send this week. Write one line on who the reader is, one on what they already know, and one on what you need from them.
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