Steven Robbins here.

Welcome to the get it done guys, quick and dirty tips to work less and do more.

I've been part of online discussions for more years than almost anyone else.

Email can be the worst.

An innocent comment can easily become name-calling and finger-pointing without making much useful progress.

For almost 10 years, my Harvard Business School Working Knowledge article on email overload

was the number one Google hit for the phrase.

Sadly, in the last year, everyone's jumped on the bandwagon, so I no longer top the rankings.

But that doesn't mean that there aren't awesome things you can do to learn how to write email effectively.

One thing I found helpful in learning how to write email without things getting heated is to keep it short.

Most people don't read beyond their preview window, so a 20-page, well-researched scholarly email,

pointless, no one will read it.

I limit my responses to 100 to 200 words of text at the most. That increases my chances of being read. But, no matter how long my response after writing it,

but before sending it, I scan it and edit it, so it's less likely to provoke strong emotions.

When I'm done, I have a masterpiece of effective online writing, and off it goes.

Eliminate personal attacks. First, scan for anything that could possibly be construed as a personal

attack. Business email should never, never contain personal attacks.

In fact, personal email shouldn't either.

The thing about violence, even verbal violence, is that people don't tend to respond to it

by saying, gee, I guess you're right.

Now I want to open-mindedly listen to you.

No, violence escalates, and anything that could be construed as a personal attack,

...