Too long, too short

A colleague asked my help to proofread a strategy paper, and I noticed that he tends to write as though he was ‘presenting it verbally’, unsurprisingly since we (at the office) ‘talk’ about things more often than we write reports. The sentences are really long, with two or three ‘and’s, and other connecting words like however, while, whilst etc. It would sound fine as a speech, but as a report, it’s not very easy on the eyes. Most of the time, I just broke down his mega-sentences into more manageable sentences. (So, do we blog as though we are 'talking', or erm 'writing'?)

Having just edited that paper, I started to notice more on the way I write things (at least for that afternoon). In one email, I wrote:

Have downloaded the relevant data. Am doing the analysis now. Will revert to you tomorrow.

That is quite ‘ugly’! I came off sounding curt, as if I’m in a rush, and dismissive. (Or am I reading too much into that?) Why drop the pronouns?

So I edited the email into:

I have downloaded the relevant data. I’m doing the analysis now, and will revert to you tomorrow.

Now that sounds better.