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I appear to have lost 28 reputation points (at least according to my reputation summary screen) for a post that I deleted 2 days ago on 26/9/17 Earthborn Inferiority.

The post received 3 up votes and 1 down vote before I deleted it. I don't think there was anything that problematic about it other than it was too short. I posted it in a hurry and after several comments saying it was too short I decided to delete it. But can anyone explain why I lost 28 reputation points?

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All reputation changes from deleted posts are reversed. This works as designed. You willingly removed the posts and reversed the reputation you gained from that answer.

Every upvote on an answer of yours gives you +10 reputation.
Every downvote on an answer of yours gives you -2 reputation.
Therefore you had +30/-2 reputation netting +28 reputation.

Those were deducted from your reputation total when you deleted the answer.

Copying a comment from Monica Cellio:

Exception: if a post scoring at least +3 that was on the site for more than 60 days gets deleted, you keep the rep. (The theory is that it was obviously helpful and was welcome on the community for an extended time. This was implemented for cases where an answer that was correct isn't now -- we don't want to penalize people for being helpful just because a new version of that software came out and changed everything.)

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    $\begingroup$ Exception: if a post scoring at least +3 that was on the site for more than 60 days gets deleted, you keep the rep. (The theory is that it was obviously helpful and was welcome on the community for an extended time. This was implemented for cases where an answer that was correct isn't now -- we don't want to penalize people for being helpful just because a new version of that software came out and changed everything.) $\endgroup$
    – Monica Cellio
    Sep 28, 2017 at 16:44
  • $\begingroup$ I think I understand now thanks. So probably best if I just undelete it? $\endgroup$
    – Slarty
    Sep 28, 2017 at 17:17
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    $\begingroup$ @Slarty If you are set on getting the rep back, yes. That should (at least as far as I know) restore the reputation. But if you thought it was too short yourself maybe you should try to expand it a bit before undeleting it. $\endgroup$
    – Secespitus
    Sep 28, 2017 at 17:55
  • $\begingroup$ @Slarty What Secespitus said. If it was sufficiently poor that you felt the best course of action was to delete it, it's probably a good idea to fix any known issues with the answer before you undelete it. (I don't know if you can edit a deleted post directly, but you can certainly prepare an edit before undeleting, then undelete and immediately edit.) As a bonus of sorts, editing will bump the post, which will likely lead to more people seeing the answer and perhaps voting on it (especially now that you've mentioned it on Meta...). $\endgroup$
    – user
    Sep 28, 2017 at 18:01
  • $\begingroup$ @MichaelKjörling You can edit deleted posts. $\endgroup$
    – sphennings
    Sep 28, 2017 at 18:24
  • $\begingroup$ @sphennings Ah well, then. (My point stands.) I don't have a whole lot of deleted posts across the network, and even fewer that I can easily find on sites where I have an amount of reputation similar to Slarty's here, so it's not something I could easily check. $\endgroup$
    – user
    Sep 28, 2017 at 18:28
  • $\begingroup$ Thanks everyone so I think I will reword it as best I can then reinstate it $\endgroup$
    – Slarty
    Sep 28, 2017 at 20:28

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