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The hard part of an email is almost never the words. It is deciding what you actually want, putting it in the first two lines, and resisting the urge to soften it into something the reader can ignore. These prompts are written around that: they move the ask to the top, cut the throat-clearing, and flag the hedges and apologies that quietly invite a no. Several of them refuse to draft anything until they have told you what your message is really doing, and one will tell you plainly that your draft is already fine to send.
36 prompts in 5 groups
Writing to people who owe you nothing, and nudging the ones who never wrote back.
Bad news, apologies, angry replies, boundaries and feedback that has to survive in writing.
Saying no cleanly, and putting a number or a counter-offer in writing.
Turning notes, long drafts and tangled threads into something short enough to read.
Reading a draft back before you send it: too cold, too soft, too annoyed.
Send a prompt you keep coming back to. A person reads every one.
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