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Comment by namanyayg | Hacker News Reader

Interesting, why reverse?

A common suggestion is to put the bottom line on the top line. Consider all the articles posted even here that make the reader suffer through the writer's own thinking process before getting to the point.

> A common suggestion is to put the bottom line on the top line.

BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front — e.g., https://hbr.org/2016/11/how-to-write-email-with-military-pre...

I don’t know. When I jam out a comment I seem to summarize at the end when I’m done, and then I reread quickly and see the summary made a weird conclusion but was a fine introduction.

When news was transmitted by flaky telegraph systems, the first paragraph evolved to be a concise version. The ensuing paragraphs provided layers of detail. If the connection was lost, whatever got through would stand as enough. That is more or less how I write emails for work. The other thing is, tell em what you’re going to say, then say it, then tell em what you told them.

This. Sometimes during hectic times, my bosses need to get the right summary of everything in one phone screen. So I generally try to have mails with a first line summarizing everything in one glance, a short section you can read in an elevator ride, and then everything else.

For example, during Log4Shell, our Group Director of Operations was helping Support and Account Management with scared customers and was just bouncing customer meeting to meeting. Hence, line one of the mail was "Rollout of mitigation 1 to applications estimated by 12:13; delays expected at only internally reachable middleware". After that, a 3-4 sentence paragraph with more details and then a longer explanation in detail, ideally with keywords highlighted and such. Those would be discussed in some peace later on.

what?

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