For example I’ll send an e-mail with 3 questions and will only get an answer to one of the questions. It’s worse when there are 2 yes/no questions with a question that is obviously not a yes/no question. Then I get a response of
Yes
back in the e-mail. So which question are they answering?
Mainly I’m asking all of you why do people insist on only answering 1 question out of an e-mail where there are multiple? Do people just not read? Are people that lazy? What is going on?
Edit at this point I’ve got the answers . Some are too lazy to actually read. Some admit they get focused on one item and forget to go back. I understand the second group. The first group yeah no excuse there.
Continuing edit: there are comments where people have tried the bullet points and they say it still doesn’t help. I might put the needed questions in red.
If you’ve got questions, put them in bullet points.
I’m not scanning a wall of text to find everything.
For me it’s not intentional. I get fixated on one of the questions that require more mental energy than the others and then forget to answer the rest. I have no excuses. My bad.
Hi andrewta,
Your issue with incpmplete responses might be because you aren’t structuring your emails in ways that reduce the cognitive load on the recipient.
If your message is too complicated, it is more likely busy or distracted recipients will miss something. Try these steps:
- Use short, easy to read paragraphs.
- Avoid complex sentence structures. Use short, easy-to-parse sentences instead.
- Avoid jargon or flowery language.
- Clearly highlight all requests/questions/actions you expect the recipient to respond to.
Communication works both ways and will work better if you communicate clearly. This may not eliminate all problems with incomplete responses, but we can all be better communicators.
Thanks,
ALoafOfBread
AI bullshit
parse
That sounds like technical jargon…
I can confirm that it doesn’t work at all. My advice is to send one question per email, or one chat message per question. It’s better.
People are lazy and stupid, you can ask one question at a time or better yet setup a meeting to ask them verbally, you aren’t getting any answers otherwise
Do people just not read? Are people that lazy? What is going on?
I can read
S-trier trolling right here.
Because, after three words, you owe me $50 an hour for my attention. $100/second if you want me to answer questions. And if you’re not even willing to consider any of that, go and absolutely fuck yourself for wasting my fucking time. You have guaranteed that I will respond in an even more hostile manner for every inevitable time pieces of shit like you demand that I do free work for you.
Eat shit and die!
Do you…need a hug?
Mod removed before I could ask the same
Considering your wording in the last paragraph, I’m going to guess that your writing style is frequently overwhelming. Making sure that questions are clearly isolated (I’d suggest using numeric lists or bullet points) makes it clear what response you’re expecting.
Additionally, if you’re asking several difficult questions, it’s likely that people will lose the thread partway through.
This. It’s pretty common in my industry for people to either copy and paste your bullets into their reply and put their responses directly after each or edit your original email in the chain with the answers in red below the bullets.
If you put it in red, loads of people will read it in black. Dont use html.
Same. At my work and everywhere I’ve worked, almost everyone responds like that to emails with multiple questions in them. It’s either OP’s workplace is an outlier or his formatting isn’t conducive enough for people to respond appropriately.
I work in text.
You can keep your infix replies and fancy colors. I want my replies to look like forwarded email as per rfc1855.
We need a bot for that.
This is what I was thinking too. Failure to exercise brevity is the leading cause of people not having the time for your email.
Failure to exercise brevity
That’s a wonderful wording!
Not OP, but I experience difficulty articulating what I mean while staying formal. How to improve?
Bullet points. If you don’t have a rapport spell things out paragraph style and then finish the email off with something like this…
So considering the above I’d like to get your opinion on these points:
-
Do you think the widget should be blue or orange?
-
Given the expected market impact do we want to bring in PR for our e-widget announcement?
-
I’m sorry but there is no difference between putting them in bullet points, or typing like I did. People need to learn to read.
Side note :
I’ve tried bullet points.
I’ve tried putting multiple return carriages between each question.
I’ve putting all the questions end on end
and it makes no difference end result is the same.
Add in a lot of the other comments saying they have the same problem it isn’t just me
People need to learn to read.
But it seems you’re the one having the issue. Rather than hoping people will learn to read better it might be a better option to write in a way that caters to those bad readers.
Try being more direct, you can still write out your whole email with the full description, but put in a section somewhere that’s easy to see that’s labeled as “QUESTIONS” and then enumerate the questions you want answered. I often will have the whole section bold and further highlight important words in red. This makes it easier for people to answer inline on the reply and helps ensure questions weren’t missed.
The truth is, most people don’t like the ‘email’ part of the job and may only check it once or twice a day and I’d most likely just skimming through several messages and not fully devoting much time to each message. By making it easier for them to reply you end up with a better result.
You can also use this when you expect someone to take action from your email. Let them know precisely what you want them to do, and make it very easy to find ‘The Ask’.
Your own report suggests there is a difference. People aren’t answering your questions. You do not have their attention apparently.
The burden is on you to get your questions answered. Other people have other concerns. Like it or not, you have to do the work of getting these answers. You may need to have a conversation instead of a list of demands.
Perhaps try an email thread instead of a single monolithic email?
Open the thread with a single key question. Listen to their reply. Does your next question still pertain? Then ask it in your reply.
People are not vending machines that contain answers you must shake out of them. A proper relationship, even if just email, is still the best way to achieve your goals.
My two cents as a person who experienced such frustrations early in my career.
Considering your wording in the last paragraph
I’m really confused by people’s reaction to OP here. I agree that I personally don’t share OP’s experiences, but what’s wrong with that last paragraph? It’s not overwhelming at all, so how does it indicate that their writing style is overwhelming? (I know MINE is, no need to point that out)
If people have trouble understanding it, then reading comprehension must really be at rock bottom.
I agree that formatting is important with l proper text length, but this is literally two lines, this isn’t in need of bullet points.
OP’s last paragraph contains three question marks and essentially one question - the first is their actual question with the following two being escalating statements. If you threw this into a work email with five other questions some people’s brains would seize up and just refuse to answer more than one question because they’re not certain if there are six or eight genuine questions.
In life and especially a professional setting we’re interacting with people in the top 1% of communication skills… and the bottom 25%.
If people have trouble understanding it, then reading comprehension must really be at rock bottom.
If 90% of people have bad reading comprehension then it doesn’t do much for anyone to point that out and stick to the way you are writing instead of making it understandable to everyone.
Few people can focus enough to read.
I work in a technical field. In the past few years I’ve learned that interacting by email usually requires one-line sentences or bullet points, with any questions being numbered. No fluff, no secondary thoughts or possibilities. Keep it as minimal as possible.
It still fails to elicit a coherent response about half the time, but it’s the best I’ve found so far.
It didn’t use to be like this. But what’s to blame; screen addiction, microplastics, covid, increased stress, … ?
Everyone should be required to take Plain Language writing courses.
There’s a lot of factors at play as to why more people prefer it now, but who cares really. Writing in plain language makes it accessible for everyone and doesn’t hurt anyone.
I don’t disagree it’s a focus thing for many people. I’m often stunned at the lack of comprehension or attention to detail using any medium, even in person (also technical field).
Like look, I just said to do what you’re asking would require 250 firewall rules…why are you now talking as if firewall rules aren’t required? I even went through the simplest math out loud during this meeting, so everyone would understand how I came up with that number and didn’t just pull it out of my ass.
People pay attention to what they want to pay attention to (or as my grandfather would say - people hear what they want to hear). If those questions aren’t a high priority for their own work, they simply don’t see them.
For OP: email is a terrible medium for such things, unless there’s been a conversation about it, and this is part of moving a project forward. Anything out of left field isn’t important to your audience, and… people dislike comitting to anything in email. As you work with people up the food chain, you’ll find less and less happens via verifiable comms like email (which is archived).
Schools (both K-12 and university) keep loosening their expectations of students, and now we have kids starting college with 6th grade reading levels.
School administrators don’t want their graduation stats to look bad, and universities don’t want to lose $$ by flunking students out, so there’s a massive conflict of interest that is ultimately resulting in a disservice to students and society at large.
The other day, I saw this 8th grade graduation exam from a county in Kentucky in 1912, and it drives home how much things have changed:
…but some things don’t. “Locate Servia on a map?”
They can’t even blame that on autocorrect; obviously the text was originally written on a qwerty keyboard though.
Just as a point of reference, my 8th grade tests were harder than that one (in Canada).
In 1912, “Servia” was the accepted English spelling. British journalists started using “Serbia” around 1914.
I’m sorry but what the fuck is number 2 under arithmetic?
That might explain younger workers, but those in their 50s and above are just as bad.
What is a Personal Pronoun?
A whole bunch of angry Americans would fail to answer that question correctly these days…
You can get mad at everyone else or you can start playing to the lowest common denominator.
-
Question 1
-
Question 2
-
Question 3
Agreed, especially if you’re writing to someone who’s not completely fluent in the language. Also use short sentences and common vocabulary.
Tried that. Got the same result
Try again.
This.
And if they don’t answer all three, the only response they get is a repeat of the missing question.
After a day.
jokes on you, they still wont respond them, or even mark which one they responded to. you have to send 3 different messages even if emails
I’ll do this and they STILL only answer the first question
Send separate emails. Schedule them 15 minutes apart.
This is so extra when motherfuckers could just read.
No. This is not the way and will get you even less answers.
This gets you “oh, I never got that email. It probably got blocked by the spam filter.”
Yep exactly. It pisses people off.
“Thank you for your answer to my first question. Could you please also address questions 2 and 3?”
At least by numbering the questions you make it easier to re-ask them.
Reply:
One down, two to go!
this is the way. if you really want the highest chance of all questions being answered, number them.
-
“Do people just not read? Are people that lazy? What is going on?”
Not much, what is going on with you?
Yes.
Take your upvote and choke on it, prick.
/s
I didn’t expect !inclusiveor@lemmy.blahaj.zone followed by !angryupvote@sh.itjust.works
Bet you didn’t expect this either
No one expects it… But what a show! Damn, the song will be stuck in my head for days now
🎶Sit on my face and tell me that you love me🎶
Yeah this drives me crazy. It’s to the point where I have to drip feed my questions one after the other sometimes. (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
My rule is more than 2 questions and it’s a phone call.
If it’s more than 2 questions, I want it all in writing
If it’s more than 1.1 questions, I want it all in writing
That’s why you have the phone call, to discuss it, and in closing state you’ll send an email.
Put the questions in bullet points so they’re easily visible. If it’s part of a paragraph, it’s getting lost.
Learn to ask better questions. Understand that you may only get one answer and ask the best most important question in a clear and concise way.
May I ask, regarding your typing are your questions buried in text?
If the questions are buried in text similar to your last paragraph, your not getting all those questions answered.
As far as I can tell their last paragraph is three clear and distinct questions.
