WASHINGTON – It’s not easy keeping up with email, especially when many of the messages are difficult, even painful, to read, but people have to keep up with them.

Perish the thought that in the haystack of messages a worker misses the needle sent late at night by the boss, which requires an immediate response.

Still, there has to be a way to sort through them. Sometimes that means grouping them into categories.

Techrepublic.com has some fun with applying a broad brush to types of emails.

Among them:

• The doctoral candidate: “Their emails include greetings and salutations, the complete history of the issue at hand, and a request for a reply that stops just short of a self-addressed stamped envelope.”
• The stream-of-consciousness emailer: “It’s the I-guess-he-knew-what-he-was-saying-but-I have-no-idea-what-he’s-talking-about kind.”
• The out-of-context puzzler: “