Anne Zelenka writes that email should be short rather than nice. She argues that elegance in emails should be expressed in brevity rather than pleasantry.
I think that this is not quite correct. Close, but not quite correct.
Effective communication is not about medium, it is about the transfer of information.
If the audience are expecting you to write in one way (polite) and you write in another (abrupt), then the delivery can get in the way of the message. Here’s an example of where a little padding could go a long way - imaginge that you are trying to convince your boss to let you use Twitter at work - and he or she just doesn’t get it. You could react by calling him or her a dinosaur, or you could sell the benefits of social networking and then segue neatly into a demonstration of Twitter (or Pownce if you are one of the really cool kids). Which do you think has the better chance of success? Sure, sometimes confrontation is inevitable, but like Sun Tzu said, it is more efficient to avoid it where possible.
So it is with email - the rule is to write to your audience first, last, and always. If they are OK with the written equivalent of grunting and pointing, and it is appropriate to the message, then go for it - brevity has always been the very soul of clarity. If you are so busy being busy that you get 1,000 emails a day, maybe you’re inviting more attention than your available capacity to handle it, and need secretarial support. It happens 
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