Answering All Three Bullets Without Listing Them
Coverage is scored and so is coherence, and the usual fix for one damages the other. Here is how to answer three bullets fully and still sound like an email.
The tension the task creates
Task 1 asks two things that pull against each other. Task Fulfilment wants every bullet addressed, which pushes candidates toward a checklist. Content and Coherence wants ideas that connect and read as a single message, which a checklist does not.
Resolve it the wrong way and you get one of two failures. The list email answers everything and reads as a form: three blocks with no relationship between them, often with the bullets' own wording copied in. The flowing email reads beautifully and quietly drops a bullet, usually the administrative one.
The resolution is structural rather than stylistic. One paragraph per bullet gives you coverage you can verify. Ordering the paragraphs so each one leads into the next gives you coherence. Both are decided in your four planning minutes, and neither costs words.
One paragraph per bullet, and why
Three body paragraphs, one per bullet, at about 45 words each, plus a purpose sentence and a close, lands at roughly 175 words. That is the arithmetic, and it does three useful things at once.
It distributes the words evenly, which prevents the most common coverage failure: two bullets developed and one given a clause. If a paragraph is noticeably shorter than the others, you can see the problem before you submit.
It satisfies paragraphing, which is named inside Readability. A 180-word block loses marks there as well as under coherence.
And it makes the coverage check possible. Pointing at a bullet and finding the paragraph that answers it takes about ten seconds when the structure is one to one, and is nearly impossible when everything is in one block.
Follow the order the prompt gives unless there is a reason not to. The bullets are usually arranged sensibly, and reordering them makes the reader work to match your email against the task.
What a bullet needs to count as answered
A bullet is answered when there is a sentence containing a specific: a number, a date, a name, an amount, or an observable fact. Mentioning the topic is not answering it.
The administrative bullet asks for details the prompt withheld. I paid a considerable amount recently answers none of it. My move took place on 14 March under booking number MR-40821, and I paid $1,340 for the full-service package answers all of it in one sentence, with facts invented on the spot. This is the bullet that gets starved, and it is worth exactly as much as the others.
The description bullet asks what happened. Replace categories with events. My cabinet was damaged becomes the glass door of my display cabinet cracked across its full width.
The effect bullet asks how it affects you, and the trap is answering with feelings. This has been very stressful is an intensifier. I have stopped using the stove, and I empty buckets on the counter twice a day is the same idea made observable, and it earns marks under two criteria rather than none.
The request bullet asks what you want. Name the action, the agent and the deadline. Please resolve this names none of the three. Could you arrange for a plumber to inspect both units by Friday names all three.
Making three paragraphs read as one email
Coverage is now safe. The coherence job is to make each paragraph hand something to the next, and there are three cheap ways to do it.
Reference. Open a paragraph with something the previous one established. Your crew leader advised me to contact your office. I have called twice since then and neither call was returned. The second sentence is welded to the first without a connector.
Consequence. Let the effect paragraph follow from the description paragraph naturally: Because the box contained everyday cookware, I have had to buy replacements while I wait. The because ties two bullets into one chain.
A close that carries the last bullet. Instead of a request paragraph followed by a generic thank-you, let the request be the ending. Could you please reply by Friday 21 March. Then sign off. The email finishes on the thing you actually want, which is both good writing and good coverage.
What to avoid is signposting the bullets. Firstly, regarding the date of my move. Secondly, regarding the damage. That is a list wearing an email's clothes, and it also copies the prompt's wording, which spends your words describing the task rather than answering it.
Give each bullet its own paragraph of roughly 45 words. Even distribution is what stops the administrative bullet being starved, and an obviously short paragraph tells you which bullet to develop before you submit.
When a bullet has three parts
Bullets often contain more than one requirement. Give the date of the move, your booking number and the amount you paid is three facts inside one bullet. Say what you want the company to do and by what date you expect a reply is two.
Each part has to appear. A response that gives the date and the amount but never a booking number has answered two thirds of that bullet, and partial coverage is a common cause of a band that seems lower than the writing deserves.
The planning defence is to label the bullet with all its parts rather than a single word. Date/number/price rather than details. Remedy/deadline rather than request. Then the checklist you check against at the end is complete.
Where several facts belong together, one sentence can carry them all, and that is usually the best use of the words. The eighteen-word purpose sentence in a strong email often clears the whole administrative bullet before the body begins.
The coverage check
Ninety seconds before you submit, do this in a fixed order.
Point at bullet one in the prompt. Find the sentence in your answer that answers it. Read that sentence and confirm it contains a specific. Repeat for bullets two and three, including every sub-part.
Then look at paragraph lengths. If one body paragraph is half the size of the others, that is the bullet you under-wrote, and one added sentence with a number in it usually fixes both the coverage and the word count.
Then check that none of your paragraphs opens with the prompt's own phrasing. If it does, you have copied the task rather than answered it, and those words are doing nothing.
Practising this separately is worth more than it sounds. Take five old answers of your own and run only the coverage check on each, without rewriting anything. Most people find at least one bullet in five answers that they would have sworn was covered.
Label multi-part bullets with every part in your plan: "date/number/price", not "details". Two facts out of three reads as covered while being partially unanswered.
Practise it
Five judgements on coverage, and on the difference between mentioning a bullet and answering it.