More advice on writing e-mails that trigger quick replies

My Sunday Boston Globe column features advice collected from some very efficient people about writing e-mails that recipients will answer -- rather than ignore, or defer until later.

There's also a sidebar: the five essential elements of an e-mail.

I'm publishing some of the best "raw" advice here: e-mails sent to me in response to several questions I asked earlier this week about what people put in the subject line, how they structure messages, and how long they can be. I was also curious whether there are times of the week (or day) when you shouldn't send an e-mail.

- John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design, and author of "The Laws of Simplicity."

- Don Dodge, Google evangelist

- Edward Boches, Chief Creative Officer at Mullen

- Diane Hessan, CEO at CommuniSpace

- Harvard Business School professor Noam Wasserman

- Tom Hopcroft, president of the Mass. Technology Leadership Council

- Sara Spalding, site director at Microsoft's New England Research & Development Center

- Emily Nagle Green, CEO of The Yankee Group

- Cort Johnson, entrepreneur and founder of DartBoston

- Jana Eggers, CEO of SpreadShirt

- Scott Johnson, managing partner at New Atlantic Ventures

- Ellen Rubin, founder and VP of products, CloudSwitch

- Keith Cline, Dissero & VentureFizz

And from Twitter, I got these compact gems of advice on how to write more effective outbound messages:

- @theboynton: mild flattery, a sincere offer to help, and a firm but non-invasive deadline

- @publicmediagirl: be as specific as possible in subject line re: desired action (feedback? approval?) & topic/substance ("Jones report")

- @semilshah: Scannable subject line, 1-2 paragraphs max, ask the question up front, no unnecessary niceties, get to the point.

- @cgunst: Writing good e-mails is like writing any good content. It's not about you, it's about what the recipient is interested in.

- @hybernaut: after writing any email longer than 2 para, go back and write a 1 sentence summary, identifying your actionable request. with practice you will end up writing that clear request first, and realize that the rest is unnecessary.

- @sarahebourne: Make it easy to see what the question is, and word it so it doesn't take a novel to answer. Offer alt. channel (i.e., phone)

What's missing from this collection of advice? Post a comment if you would...