This is an impressive piece of email communication from the White House.

The email aims to debunk myths about the U.S. health care reform bill by explicitly co-opting the format in which these myths are disseminated: a forward-friendly email of memorable bullet points. This brilliant choice allowed them to cram a lot of information about a complex, emotional, scary topic into something digestible.

They’ve also managed to nail a bunch of other great practices for email newsletter writing:

• Sincere, approachable, jargon-free writing style
• Sets clear expectations of length, structure and content early on (4th paragraph)
• Groups ideas under subheadings.
• One idea per paragraph
• Short paragraphs
• Moderate, consistent link density
• Restrained use of graphics

My only gripe with it is consistency. The section titled “8 common myths about health insurance reform” mixes restatement (e.g. “We can’t afford reform”) and refutation (e.g. “Vets’ health care is safe and sound”), effectively reinforcing the myths, weakening the refutations or both for less careful readers.