What a short memo is for

1

Inside large firms, length is often mistaken for effort. A ten-page background note looks like work in a way that a ten-line memo does not, and writers learn the lesson quickly. They add history. They add courtesy. They add a paragraph that hopes the reader is well. None of that is free. A reader who must choose between two dates has a limited amount of attention, and every sentence that is not the choice spends some of it before the choice appears.

2

Researchers who study workplace reading describe this as a front-loading problem. The decision, if it exists, should be visible before the justification. Readers in a study of internal email were more likely to remember a date when it occupied the first sentence than when the same date occupied the final one, even though both versions contained the identical fact. The longer version was not less accurate. It was less available. Accuracy that arrives after the reader has replied is accuracy that did not enter the decision.

3

There is a fair objection. Some decisions cannot be stated in a line because the risk sits in a number the reader has a duty to audit. A memo that hides a changed cost inside a cheerful opening is not efficient. It is evasive. The distinction is the reader's job. When the job is to choose, brevity that states the choice is a service. When the job is to check a figure, brevity that omits the figure is a trick. Writers who use one rule for both jobs produce either novels that nobody finishes or one-liners that nobody should trust.

4

The practical implication is narrower than the slogans about short writing. A useful memo names the decision, the constraint that forces it, and the person who will carry the next step. It does not begin by praising the reader's family, and it does not end by hoping the reader understands a situation the memo never described. Teams that adopted a four-line ceiling for decision mail did not write less in total. They moved the background into a document that was linked, not pasted, and they argued in the meeting instead of in the approach to the point.