I do encounter issues with people who don’t treat it this way, but they are solvable. Like all media, it is a matter of effective communication, which means tailoring to your audience, while still expressing the right information.

I think the trick is brevity. The large number of words in the English language gives it flexibility and power.

Another technique is the “executive summary”. If you need to give a lot of details (eg in order to be thorough in a professional situation), give the recipient a short and a long version. This technique comes from reports and speeches, but it works just as well in email. Give the short version first, in case they tune out. You can treat a long email like a newspaper article – most important facts first, drill into detail later on.

Notice the number of media I’ve just compared email to. This illustrates the flexibility of the medium, which is its greatest strength and weakness. It inherits the expressive strengths of many media, but the flexibility leads to many interpretations of its usage, and conflicting expectations of participants.

In terms of expectations, it has similar weaknesses to verbal conversation. You get very talkative people, and very quiet people. If these two types are communicating, one can perceive that its “like getting blood out of a stone”, whereas the other can feel overwhelmed by the guy that won’t shut up. However, there are the times where the two extremes balance out, the talky person lubricates the conversation, the quiet person subdues the over-excitable one.

The key is balance.