This was such an improvement to mine as well. Lots of strange advice in this thread about "one sentence/question per email" and other arbitrary terseness. Just use a messaging system for single-thread async communication.
Writing the email is part of the thinking process for me so by the time I finish there is a single coherent sentence that I can cut-paste to the top with the rationale/evidence/etc organized below it. If the one-liner is enough they can skip the rest (which I needed to write anyway regardless) and if they need more detail they don't have to ask.
Some other practices I've picked up over the years:
Responses should always be inline between relevant quotes rather than the default of hiding the original at the bottom. Remove quotes that don't matter. My favourite responses are a simple "Agreed." after a long quoted paragraph of justification.
In general the email chain should get shorter with each reply otherwise it suggests that the topic is either too complex or insufficiently defined. It also gives some sense that it will eventually end!
Write subject lines that make searching/filtering easy to do later rather than something to catch the recipient's attention.
> Writing the email is part of the thinking process for me...
Same here.
> Responses should always be inline between relevant quotes rather than the default of hiding the original at the bottom.
This is highly polarizing. As you can tell I also like inline replies. I grew up using BBSs and inline replies were common. It seemed so natural. Then Outlook came around and top-posting became the norm.
I have gotten some scathing criticism from higher-ups for inline responses (along with some scant praise). I have been told, repeatedly, that inline responses are confusing.
Personally, I think anybody confused by inline responses (particularly if they're formatted distinctly) probably shouldn't be using email as part of their job because they lack the necessary mental faculties.
(I've given up with my strongly-held beliefs about plain text email. I still send plain text by default but I grudgingly reply with HTML / rich text if an email started that way.)