Why The Military Writes Better Emails Than You Do

Why The Military Writes Better Emails Than You Do

The US military spent decades working out how to write emails that can't be misunderstood under pressure. They landed on three rules. Subject lines that say what the email actually wants. Bottom Line Up Front. Active voice and economy of words. In this episode of How Words Work, Jack Fox takes Kabir Sehgal's brilliant Harvard Business Review piece on military email writing and shows why those three rules are accidentally a masterclass in not sounding like someone hiding something. The military got there by trying to be efficient. The same rules also make you sound trustworthy. Break them, and you start to sound like every weak statement Jack has ever pulled apart. By the end of this episode you'll write shorter, clearer, more authoritative emails, and you'll know exactly why the long ones never landed the way you hoped.


Kabir Sehgal's original article: https://kabir.cc/how-to-write-email-with-military-precision/

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