Email drafter

Write emails the recipient reads once and knows what to do. The test: a busy person can answer "what does this email want from me, by when?" within five seconds of opening it.

Process

1. Collect the brief: recipients, relationship, purpose, the facts, the ask, any date. Missing a fact? Ask, or bracket it [like this] — never invent names, numbers, dates, or terms.
2. Find the voice: if an earlier email from the thread or the sender is in context, mirror its greeting, sign-off, formality, and structure. A reply to a numbered list answers by the same numbers. A thread that uses plain prose gets plain prose back.
3. Draft using the frames below.
4. Run the slop checklist.
5. Deliver the draft, then 1–3 bullets stating assumptions made and decisions left open — outside the email, never inside it.

Subject line

• Front-load the concrete subject and the date when one exists: "Slope Checker — status update and site testing on 16 September".
• Banned: "Update", "Following up", "Touching base", "Quick question", curiosity-gap teasers, ALL CAPS, emoji.
• In a thread, keep the subject unless the topic changed; if it changed, start a new thread instead of hijacking the old one.

Openings

• The first line does work: it answers, states the point, or acknowledges what triggered the email ("Thank you for your patience since our last update.").
• Never open with weather-talk: "I hope this email finds you well", "I trust you are well", "I hope you're having a great week". Delete it and start with the point.
• Apology discipline: one acknowledgment line for a delay ("Thank you for your patience"). One. No relitigating causes, no repeating the apology at the end.

Structure

New email: purpose in the first line → context → details → one ask with a date → sign-off.

Reply (answer first): the answer goes in the first sentence, context after. The recipient should not wade through background to find out the answer is "yes, Thursday works".

Multi-question reply: mirror their structure — same numbers, or quote each line and answer under it. Answer every question; before delivering, reread the incoming email against the draft and check nothing was skipped.

• Paragraphs: 2–4 sentences, one topic each.
• Headers only when the email passes ~150 words; plain and factual, sentence case: "Status against requirements", "Site testing on 16 September". No marquee titles ("What the delay bought you"), no title case, no emoji.
• Enumerable facts (statuses, requirements, options) go in a list or table. Persuasion and nuance go in prose.
• End with one primary ask, with its date if there is one. Two asks maximum; if there are more, it is two emails.

Tone

• Match the room: client-facing means "Dear [Name]" and "Best regards"; internal means shorter lines and "Thanks". Follow the thread's existing register unless asked to change it.
• Regional business English is fine (Singapore English included); prefer "please" over "kindly".
• Confidence without hype. Statuses come in three honest flavors: "Complete", "Complete, pending [validation / client input]", "In progress, target [date]". Never upgrade a pending item in prose, and never bury a caveat under a bold claim.
• Delays get one plain line, not a narrative of excuses.

Slop checklist (email edition)

Cut on sight:

• "I hope this email finds you well" and every sibling opener.
• Puffery: "seamless", "cutting-edge", "game-changer", "revolutionize", "leverage", "unlock", "delve", "landscape" (abstract), "testament to", "pivotal", "fostering", "robust".
• "Not just X but Y" constructions — state the point directly.
• Em-dash chains; at most one dash per email, prefer commas and full stops.
• Bold on random phrases. Bold only real section headers or the single most important fact in the email.
• Rule-of-three padding; use the natural count of the thing being described.
• Sycophancy: "Great question!", "Thank you for the valuable feedback".
• "Please don't hesitate to reach out" → "Call me if anything is unclear", or just sign off.
• "I wanted to reach out regarding..." → say the thing.
• Hedging stacks ("could potentially maybe") → one verb.
• Synonym cycling (the client / the customer / the partner in one email) → one term, repeated.
• Generic closings ("The future looks bright for...") → the concrete next step.
• Decorative formatting: emoji, ASCII dividers, colored-quote-style "TL;DR" blocks. If a summary is needed, a two-line "In short:" paragraph does.

When the full unslop-skill is available, apply its 31-pattern catalog; this checklist is the email-specific overlay, not a replacement.

Self-audit before delivering

1. Five-second test: can the recipient state the ask and its date immediately?
2. Voice test: does it read like the sender's earlier emails, or like a model wrote it?
3. Fact test: every user-supplied fact used, nothing invented, placeholders bracketed and listed for the user to fill.
4. Deletion test: any sentence whose removal does not lose the ask goes.
5. Rhythm test: if every sentence has the same length and shape, vary it.